How Customer Identity Access Management Protects Data

Customer Identity and Access Management systems allow companies to manage their external user base. The system provides ways for authenticating users and setting their permissions. In the end, the goal of these features is to protect the user's data. In order to ensure that only the correct user accesses some of the company's data (like a customer accessing their transaction history), the system needs to properly and securely identify the user. This article will show the techniques a CIAM system implements that allow APIs to make informed authorization decisions.

How CIAM Protects Data

A CIAM solution caters for two important aspects of any system — authentication and authorization. Authentication allows applications and APIs to identify the user while authorization enforces the correct policies so that a user only accesses the right data. APIs make the authorization decisions using the identity attributes asserted by the CIAM system. Here are some features with which CIAM systems help companies protect their data.

Multifactor Authentication

Also called two-factor authentication, it is a way to strengthen the assurance of the user’s identity. The method chains different authentication factors, for example, adding confirmation with the use of specialized authentication software or a physical security key after the user provides their username and password. MFA can also be achieved with biometric login or sending one-time passwords (or authentication links) with a text message or email.

Passwordless

Passwords can be easily compromised, stolen, guessed, or phished. A modern solution is to authenticate users without requiring a password. The best way is to leverage passkeys, as most operating systems and browsers already support the technology. However, CIAM allows you to also achieve passwordless authentication using other methods, like SMS, email, a specialized application, or a hardware token.

Token-based Authorization

Modern applications don’t implement authentication, but instead leverage a CIAM system to externalize it. Once the authentication is done, the application receives a secure user credential that it can use to call APIs — a token. The token has a limited lifespan and scope of use; it allows the application to perform authorized requests to APIs. As a result, applications don’t handle sensitive user information, like passwords. Different applications can share the same authentication system so users do not have to remember multiple sets of credentials.

Tokens also work well for authorization purposes. The token is associated with a set of identity attributes about the user. APIs can leverage these attributes to implement any authorization method, like Access Control Lists (ACL), Role Based Access Control (RBAC), or Attribute Based Access Control (ABAC).

Data Encryption

With a centralized system, it’s simpler to ensure proper handling of critical data. The CIAM system is responsible for storing sensitive identity data and can ensure that the data is properly encrypted while at rest. The CIAM system can enforce the usage of encryption in transit so that credentials are never sent over insecure channels.

Management of User Data Privacy

By centralizing the management of user data, CIAM systems simplify compliance with privacy laws like CCPA or GDPR. The systems enable the collection of user consent for data processing and simplify a design that collects minimal required data. Minimizing sensitive data handled by an organization can reduce the impact of a breach.

Monitoring and Reporting

CIAM systems can keep records of authentication events allowing businesses to keep an eye out for odd activity so that they can take appropriate action in the event of a security incident. More and more systems nowadays employ machine learning to identify anomalous login patterns or other suspicious activity that could point to a security breach.

How Curity Solves Your CIAM Challenges

The Curity Identity Server brings identity and API security together for robust authentication and authorization. It comes with a set of built-in authentication methods and an extensive list of actions that allow customized behavior and user journey orchestration. With the Curity Identity Server, you can easily:

• Chain authentication methods for multifactor authentication.
• Create tailored onboarding experiences.
• Use Passkeys for modern passwordless authentication.
• Configure step-up authentication so that users set up more secure authentication methods only when required.
• Easily integrate with legacy systems and use them as identity providers or effortlessly perform migrations of users’ identities.
• Integrate with any system and implement authentication requirements through the extensive plugin system and SDKs.

The Curity Identity Server allows you to use standards like OAuth, OpenID Connect, SAML, or SCIM to meet your criteria.

Curity’s CIAM solution uses OAuth’s access tokens to propagate identity attributes to APIs. While the authentication service allows you to configure your authentication processes, the token service gives you powerful control over the data associated with tokens. It allows you to adapt the access token to any API. With the Curity Identity Server there is no limit for the source of attributes that end up in an access token. You can retrieve additional attributes from an LDAP directory, a database such as Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle, DynamoDB, or from a REST API.

Curity’s Customer IAM solution is scalable and can be deployed on your preferred infrastructure. The Curity Identity Server is a cloud-native CIAM with an administration web UI and a DevOps dashboard for simplified access to popular settings like client configurations or user data. Being cloud-native, the Curity Identity Server can be easily managed with a GitOps and configuration-as-code approach.

Published: 2024-11-20

Michal Trojanowski

Product Marketing Engineer at Curity