Line-of-business (LOB) managers understand the importance of creating simple and positive digital experiences for consumers. Making it easy to do business with your company helps build loyalty and drives sales. In the identity and access management (IAM) space, this means facilitating user onboarding and logins from any device anywhere — and keeping those processes as smooth and simple as possible, free of stepped-up authentication requirements such as one-time passwords (OTPs).

Balancing Security and Convenience With Silent IAM

Internal users handle digital experiences differently than consumers. While a business’s internal users are mandated to use certain systems in their workplace, consumers can opt in or out of whatever services they please. Here, your IAM strategy becomes essential to your relationship with your users.

While your internal users may become frustrated when faced with OTPs, consumers will simply abandon your site without hesitation. Therefore, you must make the digital experience pleasant or run the risk of losing out to the competition. Case in point: One recent study revealed that consumers who find authentication processes easy to use leverage digital services 10 to 20 percent more than customers who are frustrated by them.

Even so, organizations must put security measures in place to safeguard both customer data and organizational resources. In fact, according to Forrester, customer identity and access management (CIAM) is expected to be one of the fastest-growing areas of IAM in 2018.

We’ve seen CIAM implemented effectively in a customer-pleasing way when companies enable users to log in via their social network credentials. Simply sign on from any device, and you’ll never have to re-enter your password. Customers have come to expect such hassle-free digital experiences.

Successfully deploying an IAM solution that achieves strong security and delivers an excellent digital experience requires close collaboration between the chief information security officer (CISO) and the LOB executive. Yet too often LOB executives, in their race to create an excellent customer experience, drive CIAM without the CISO’s involvement. Security is left as an afterthought.

Use Strong Security, But Keep It Silent

How are the leading consumer-facing businesses of the world striking a balance between security and a great customer experience? In all likelihood, they’re leveraging silent security. Simply put, silent security works in the background to connect people to the information and applications they need, intervening only when bad actors are detected.

You don’t have to sacrifice security for a great digital experience. IBM IAM solutions provide silent security, working in conjunction with other security tools to verify and protect user identities. You’ll be able to offer near-frictionless authentication for your customers with features such as single sign-on for the one-password logins customers expect, as well as user self-service features for password resets and more. Plus, users can leverage social network identities for fast registration and developers can directly integrate strong authentication.

With IBM IAM solutions, access management and identity governance are applied consistently, regardless of resource type, and access decisions are backed by analytics for speed and efficiency. As a result, LOB managers and IT professionals can partner to make better access decisions, and you can provide the experience that internal and external users have come to expect without changing the applications being secured.

IBM IAM can help you achieve your digital transformation, making your CIAM initiatives successful for LOB executives and the CISO with silent security that both protects the business and helps it grow.

Discover how IBM Identity and access management solutions provide strong security by going silent