CIAM is like a guard at the digital gate. It’s not just about creating barriers to prevent unauthorized access to your systems – it’s also about making your online experience smooth and stress-free.
Here’s the cool part: According to Gartner, using CIAM with extra safety features like fraud detection and passwordless logins can cut customer churn by more than 50% by 2025. CIAM is a custodian of your customer data and a facilitator for great customer experiences.
What are CIAM Software Solutions?
Customer Identity and Access Management (CIAM) software solutions manage and secure digital user identities. CIAM goes beyond basic authentication by incorporating features like social logins, MFA, and consent management. The distinction lies in CIAM’s customer-centric approach, ensuring a user-friendly experience while maintaining robust security measures.
CIAM software solutions enable you to streamline user registration, manage customer profiles, and implement secure authentication methods. They play a critical role in balancing user convenience and data protection.
Benefits of CIAM Software Solutions
- Streamlined customer experience: Simplifies and enhances the customer journey by offering streamlined registration processes, personalized interactions, and easy service access.
- Enhanced security measures: Ensures a secure environment with techniques like MFA, risk-based access controls, and real-time security monitoring.
- Scalability and flexibility: Provides scalability to accommodate increasing user numbers and diverse needs.
- Builds customer trust: You can build customer trust by demonstrating to your customers that you provide safe and secure services.
- Compliance management: Provides tools for consent management, helping organizations obtain and track customer consent.
- Unified customer view: Consolidates customer data into a unified view, allowing you to gain insights into customer behavior, preferences, and interactions.
Key Features to Look For in a CIAM Software Solution
When evaluating a CIAM software solution, you must ensure it includes all the features required for your business, such as:
- Multi-factor authentication (MFA): Strong MFA adds an extra layer of security by verifying users through multiple methods.
- Social identity integration: CIAM that integrates with social media platforms makes user registration easier with familiar social credentials.
- Consent management: Tools for efficient tracking, managing user consent, and staying compliant with privacy rules are a must-have.
- Scalability: Opt for a scalable CIAM solution that accommodates growth without compromising performance.
- Automated provisioning: Select a solution that automates user provisioning and de-provisioning across all assets.
Top 10 CIAM Software Solutions
Let’s review the top CIAM solutions on the market.
1. Okta
Okta CIAM is an identity management solution with a developer-friendly approach and minimal custom code requirements to help you implement Okta best practices. It offers flexibility for various applications and platforms, including building new apps to enhance account takeover protection.
Key Features:
- The social authentication feature allows users to sign in with login information from social networking services like Facebook and Google.
- Universal Directory feature provides a centralized view of all user identities.
- Single Sign-On and pre-built integrations with various apps.
- Adaptive MFA.
Best For: Creating a consistent user experience across multiple platforms.
Price: By inquiry.
Review: “Okta’s SSO is a great and simple product. For the administrators, the managing capabilities are excellent.”
2. Rezonate
While not a CIAM solution, Rezonate is an identity security platform that complements CIAM and IAM strategies. Rezonate addresses the complexity, lack of visibility, and alert fatigue of traditional IAM solutions.
By prioritizing continuous protection and risk management, Rezonate helps you reduce risks at scale, providing insights into security gaps and activities across identity structures and attack surfaces.
Key Features:
- Easy one-click deployment, ensuring swift setup within fifteen to sixty minutes for large organizations.
- Simple and highly scalable.
- Provides comprehensive visibility over accounts, assets, and identity levels.
- Utilizes real-time risk scores to identify and address security gaps.
- Proactively enforces real-world least privileged access.
- Detects malicious impersonation, access rights issues, and excessive privileges before any potential damage occurs.
Best For: Continuous protection and risk prioritization.
Price: Contact Rezonate customer support for pricing details.
Review: “Rezonate solves our extended identity attack surface, enhancing our security process without slowing us down, keeping us vigilant against threats.”
3. IBM Security Verify
IBM Security Verify provides AI-powered context for consumer and workforce identity and access management (IAM). While Security Verify is designed for enterprises that leverage the cloud, IBM offers a Verify Access version for legacy and on-premises apps.
Key Features:
- Single Sign-On for centralized control.
- Advanced authentication, including passwordless and MFA.
- AI and ML analyze access patterns and risks, adjusting authentication requirements in real time.
- Consent management templates.
Best For: Businesses in the process of migrating from on-prem to the cloud.
Price: Pricing for IBM Security Verify software is based on actual usage. You can calculate the cost based on usage here.
Review: “We utilize Verify to validate user identities with our own bespoke multi-factor authentication mechanisms.”
4. Google Cloud Identity
Google Cloud Identity is a robust CIAM unified service that offers identity, access, app, and endpoint management. It has out-of-the-box integration with hundreds of cloud applications and also works with many pre-integrated apps.
Key Features:
- Multiple MFA methods, including push notifications and Google Authenticator.
- Compatible with Android, iOS, and Windows devices and applications.
- Extensive documentation is available online.
- Enterprise-grade support and SLA.
Best For: Highly scalable cloud-hosted applications and businesses with a very large customer base.
Price: Google Cloud Identity follows a pay-as-you-go pricing structure with $300 free credits for new users.
Review: “I have had a positive experience with the Google Cloud Identity so far. It protects my user account not just with Google apps but with all browsing across Chrome.”
5. CyberArk
CyberArk Customer Identity provides a secure platform for managing application access, endpoints, and network infrastructure. It emphasizes strong security features like privacy, consent, and identity verification.
Key Features:
- Pre-built security widgets and open APIs to support developers.
- AI-powered and passwordless MFA.
- Secure and granular access control for human and machine identities within the DevOps pipeline.
- Secure Single Sign-On experience and AI-powered, password-free authentication.
Best For: Development and integration support features.
Price: Offers a free trial, then the price is by inquiry.
Review: “It manages user’s passwords as well as monitors activity to prevent inside threats in our organization.”
6. ForgeRock Identity Platform
ForgeRock Identity Platform is a versatile solution that supports over 120 integrations, facilitating the integration of solutions for authentication, risk and fraud management, identity proofing, behavioral biometric authentication, and more.
Key Features:
- Low-code/no-code interface for easy-to-customize user journeys.
- Automates human and machine identity lifecycle management.
- Provides SDKs for embedding identity into web and mobile apps quickly.
- Provides a profile and privacy management dashboard for controlling privacy preferences.
Best For: Hybrid enterprise environments. It supports on-prem, cloud, legacy, and mobile applications.
Price: By inquiry.
Review: “ForgeRock can support legacy systems meanwhile delivering the most cutting-edge IAM solutions with the latest modules.”
7. Auth0
Auth0 is a flexible, drop-in solution that makes it easy to add authentication and authorization to your applications. It is a highly customizable solution, allowing you to unify identity systems across all platforms.
Key Features:
- The search feature makes it easy to find, update, and manage user information.
- Diverse libraries for integration with any programming language.
- Gathers insights from consumer applications for product and marketing departments.
- Provides extensive learning resources and documentation about authentication, security, and growth.
Best For: Customization and branding.
Price: Offer four plans: Free, Essentials ($35 per month), Professional ($240 per month), and Enterprise.
Review: “It has a lot of customization potential so that you can set the level of security according to you.”
8. Microsoft Entra
Microsoft Entra ID is the new name for Azure AD. It facilitates secure access to a wide array of resources, including Microsoft 365, Azure portal, and numerous SaaS applications.
Key Features:
- Password synchronization.
- Customizable single sign-on (SSO) portals for each user.
- Authentication support for on-premises applications
- Support SMS codes, phone calls, mobile app notifications, and biometrics.
Best For: Organizations with cloud-based infrastructure that utilize Microsoft services such as Office 365 and Azure.
Price: Offers four pricing plans: Free, P1 ($6.00 user/month), P2 ($9.00 user/month), and Governance ($7.00 user/month).
Review: “MS Entra verified ID can scale up or scale down the access based on the credentials of the employees, which is very useful.”
9. Ping Identity
PingOne for Customers is a cloud-based identity solution combining no-code identity orchestration, user management, and multi-factor authentication. It’s easy to set up and integrate with other identity providers.
Key Features:
- Single Sign On and MFA authentication.
- Creates a single view of the customer by unifying customer profiles across identity silos.
- Enforces safe data sharing in line with data privacy best practices.
- Low-code/no-code orchestration capabilities.
Best For: Integration with other Ping products and services.
Price: By inquiry.
Review: “Ping Identity is super easy to use and configure; their support team has helped us with any issues we’ve had during setup.”
10. One Login
OneLogin provides a single CIAM solution for managing customer identities across multiple platforms. OneLogin facilitates integration with custom apps and third-party systems, plus it allows you to add custom branding and colors.
Key Features:
- Provides one-click access for all devices, to all enterprise cloud and on-prem applications.
- Session management architecture requires re-authentication after a pre-defined period of inactivity.
- Single Sign On and social sign on authentication methods for streamlined customer experience.
- Multi-factor authentication, biometrics, and risk-based authentication.
Best For: Managing customer identities across multiple channels
Price: By inquiry.
Review: “OneLogin is like a one-stop shop. I can access different apps/websites in just one place.”
CIAM + IAM = Continuous Protection and Risk Reduction
Pair a CIAM solution with Rezonate’s identity security platform to protect your customers, partners, and employees from identity breaches.
Rezonate simplifies the complexity of IAM by visualizing and profiling your identity and access weak spots. Rezonate makes real time security simple and easy to understand, so you can start finding, prioritizing, and mitigating risks within the first hour of deployment.
See Rezonate in action today.
