Cloud Identity for Customer and Partner Portals

There’s never been a better time to be a CIO. Increasingly, IT sits at the centre of the enterprise, enabling business like never before. Today, marketing and sales teams rely heavily on technology tools for data insights and streamlined customer interactions. Siloes between departments fall away as leaders begin to understand the competitive significance of clear, consistent communication between employees, customers and partners.

Unfortunately, the process of integrating these new initiatives into existing corporate infrastructure can be rocky, and identity management sits squarely at the root of the problem. When a new portal creates another password for users who already face a long list of logins and access points, they may be reluctant to use it. IT also feels this burden: Growing and fragmented lists of access rights, identity frameworks, and password reset requests make it harder and harder to secure the business.

In this white paper, we show you how cloud-based identity management helps IT leaders overcome these challenges. Take low-adopter apps and turn them into business generators. Make systems that were once security liabilities function as your first line of defence against intrusions and breaches. Okta customers, such as Adobe, Zuora, and Rotary International, prove it’s all possible:

• Increase app adoption and engagement

• Streamline collaboration

• Grow operational efficiency

• Strengthen security

 

Introduction

Enterprises for IT leaders who thrive on new challenges, there has never been a better time to be a CIO. In addition to traditional back-office responsibilities, IT is now increasingly the chief business enabler. When the marketing team demands insight into customer behaviour, when the sales team requests new ordering capabilities in a mobile app, when the operations team asks to automate manual processes, and when every department requires a common way of identifying customers and partners, it’s IT that delivers.

IT’s expanded role is being pioneered by forward-thinking leaders in every industry. In aviation, airlines have moved loyalty programs to the cloud. In real estate, agent productivity is soaring thanks to new mobile and web-based tools. In software, companies are transitioning from selling packaged software to providing services in the cloud. From business-to-business initiatives like partner portals and mobile catalogues to consumer-focused projects like customer forums and mobile apps, IT is building value throughout the business.

In the past, integrating all these new initiatives into existing corporate infrastructures was a huge headache. Every new app or element of functionality required a notion of identity. Adding identity was expensive and slow. Initiatives that were meant to drive new business became a drag on operational efficiency and often failed for lack of adoption.

Fragmentation was a widespread problem. Each new project typically created at least one new identity. And some projects, like customer and partner portals, created multiple identities. This was a bad experience for users, who had to log in multiple times, and even worse for IT, which became responsible for operating, monitoring and patching each new system. Fragmentation made it harder to secure the business. It created extra work—access rights had to be managed throughout the user lifecycle in multiple identity frameworks. Requests for password recovery alone piled up. And then there was the challenge of securing the code itself, making sure developers had followed best practices, scanning the code for vulnerabilities, limiting physical access to servers, and more.

 

Overcoming the Limitations of On-prem Identity with IDaas

IT leaders have responded to the challenges posed by legacy infrastructure and the shortcomings of on-premises solutions by adopting identity as a service (IDaaS). A cloud-based solution, IDaaS lowers the total cost of ownership, boosts security and provides a consistent user experience across an enterprise and its ecosystem of customers and partners.

By choosing Okta, the leading IDaaS provider, IT leaders have turned one-time impediments into opportunities. Apps that once suffered from low adoption are now generating new business Systems that were once security liabilities now function as the first line of defence against intrusions and breaches.

Below are examples of how IDaaS in general, and Okta, in particular, are helping IT improve performance across the organisation while connecting with customers and partners.

 

Increased App Adoption and Engagement

Password fatigue has gotten so bad that the federal government is tempted to send in the troops. Last year, White House Cybersecurity Coordinator Michael Daniel said what he really wanted to do was “kill the password dead.” Realistically, he said he’d settle for replacing it “with something that’s actually easy for people to use.”

As a business, the last thing you want to do is make it difficult for users to log in by asking them to remember multiple passwords or challenging them with cumbersome authentication processes.

IDaaS doesn’t eliminate passwords, but it does make it easier for customers and partners to connect with your company by providing a single, cohesive user experience. Even if your existing infrastructure remains fragmented behind the scenes, Okta lets you lay a welcome mat in front of your digital front door. On the web, with Okta’s Single Sign-On, users click once to sign in to everything. If they leave the web, they can continue to use that identity to interact with every part of your organisation wherever they are— in the office, at a department store kiosk, or in a mobile app.

Rotary International experienced the benefits of IDaaS when it chose Okta to manage identity for the 1.2 million members of Rotary Clubs around the world. Rotary International had created a smorgasbord of web apps that allowed members to apply for grants, take advantage of e-learning curriculums, participate in webinars, and more.

 

Streamlined Collaboration

The secret to successful collaboration with customers and partners is flexible access management. One-size-fits-all approaches are doomed to failure. It’s best to expect each customer or partner organisation will have different needs, ranging from their own set of security requirements to administrative processes. Some organisations may want to directly administer users within your app, while others may want to manage access locally and federate into