Market study authentification methods
Customer authentication is constantly evolving at an ever-increasing pace. The need for strong authentication is explained today by the convergence of several elements:
- Rise of customer portals,
- Rapid adoption of IoT technologies,
- Regulatory compliance,
- Sophistication of threats.
The Covid crisis has further increased the risk of attacks. Lockdowns and new health regulations have accelerated the digitalization of all services, making cybersecurity and authentication hot topics for all companies.
In order to establish a Digital Identity 2025 vision and come out with a product roadmap, our client, an international telecommunication operator, called upon Sofrecom to conduct a market study on the evolution of authentication methods.
The operator offers a wide range of cybersecurity products for the general public. Nevertheless, they note a lack of global strategy and coordination between these different products. Furthermore, product development at the company is traditionally done from a technical performance perspective. They noted a lack of customer focus in the design.
The objectives are as follows:
- To have an overview of authentication methods from a customer experience standpoint and to draw key trends
- To have an overview of digital protection providers and their value propositions
- To provide the elements required to answer the "Make or Buy" question. That is, recommendations for the selection and inclusion of authentication providers through benchmarking and evaluation of different providers' offerings.
The aim is to build a value proposition that coordinates and supports the various existing products. We will also reflect on the different business models that could be put in place.
A proven methodology
To conduct this study, our consultants in strategic marketing performed open-source data crunching.
Interviews were conducted with various experts working for our client (product managers, technical and business experts and external experts (third party providers). Interviews with the providers allowed us not only to validate, confirm and complete the information collected but also to obtain different visions of the evolution of authentication methods with experts’ perspective.
Our consultants shared these findings and aligned themselves with the portfolio management.
This study is based on 3 main themes.
- Characteristics and challenges of the Customer Identity and Access Management (CIAM) market. The objective here is to recall the difference between Identity and Access Management (IAM) and CIAM and to insist that CIAM requires more flexibility in authentication. IAM enables the management of identities controlled by the company (employee, partner), while CIAM aims to provide answers to the management of customer identities. Elements of the IAM system are still present in the CIAM systems, but taking into account the customer experience has led to changes in the way we think about authentication methods.
- Developments in authentication methods that help answer the question, "How can we maintain security and ensure a frictionless customer journey?"
- Benchmark of digital protection solution providers.
In this section, the analysis is mainly based on rankings, positioning mapping and detailed identity sheets of the main players. This section is a proprietary collection of company data and is based primarily on interviews with providers.
Our study allowed our client to evaluate authentication methods (understanding of the concept, advantages and disadvantages of each method).
Our client has a vision on the evolution of authentication methods (from single-factor and multi-factor authentication to passwordless).
Finally, our client got recommendations to select and include authentication providers.
