Can Your Identity Solution Grow With Your Company?

The number of Venture Capital deals signed in Latin America hit a record high of 488 in 2020. That’s nearly double the 2017 number according to Bloomberg. The growth in the tech market in LatAm isn’t only apparent in new startup deals; companies who already have a presence in the region are expanding both through mergers and acquisitions and by looking into new countries to grow their footprint in the region.

Each scenario brings its own challenges for your IT infrastructure, particularly your identity solution. If you’re expanding into a new country, there’s likely to be a different data privacy regulation you’ll have to comply with. And that startup you’re eyeing probably has a vastly different infrastructure than yours, whether private or public cloud or even legacy on-prem. An Identity management solution has to be able to expand and flex in order to grow with your company, regardless of the specific scenario.

With Business Expansion Come Business Questions

Let’s take a look at those two potential growth scenarios and what they mean for your business’s identity solution. First up is the acquisition of a competitor or related smaller entity. Mergers and acquisitions (M&A) always bring an array of unique challenges, but for this article, we’re going to focus on the identity challenges associated with the merging of IT infrastructure.

Your web app may be hosted on a public cloud, but the company you just bought has been in business for a while and is still using on-prem hosting for theirs. In order for you to bring both properties together under one identity solution, you need one that can bridge the gap between the two, allowing your new audience access to both apps without managing multiple sets of credentials.

In our second scenario, your organization is considering an expansion into a neighboring country to take advantage of the easing of business restrictions and the growing market for your product that your marketing team has identified. You already comply with the privacy regulations in your country, but are you ready to comply with those abroad?

Is your organization ready to answer questions like these:

• Can our existing in-house identity platform scale to include our hybrid-cloud infrastructure and the legacy system our latest acquisition uses?
• Is our identity solution ready to handle the influx of new user accounts and login requests when we roll out to our new market?
• Is our consent gathering process in compliance with the regulations in the country we’re expanding into?

If not, or if the answer to any of these questions is “no,” it may be time to consult with an identity specialist.

"Auth0 recommends you always consult legal counsel when it comes to complying with data privacy regulations."

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Auth0 Is the Identity Solution That Scales With You

Both of these scenarios mean you’re going to be scaling your infrastructure, adding users to existing web apps, and even adding new web apps. Having an identity solution in place that can easily expand to include controlling access to these new properties can help reign in costs and speed your time to market post-expansion. Our customers tell us that by using Auth0 for their authentication and identity needs, they took their time-to-value from months or years down to weeks or even days.

Credit card company Visa reported that during just the first month of the COVID-19 pandemic, more than 13 million cardholders in Latin America made their very first e-commerce transaction. That’s 13 million new accounts being created, 13 million new logins, and 13 million opportunities for identity to go wrong if your solution isn’t scalable. There are many aspects to what makes something scalable. When it comes to identity, we see five as being the most important.

1. Bridging legacy and cloud systems

One of the downsides to M&A is that your IT department inherits the backend infrastructure of the other company, for better or worse. Auth0’s extensive SDK libraries and robust APIs mean it’s a simple matter to bridge the gap between legacy systems and modern cloud-first ones. One login box can take your current and new customers to both web apps, no matter where they’re hosted. This ability also speeds your time to value because your developers can maintain focus on their core product delivery rather than piecing together connectivity solutions that may only work for a short time.

2. Single source of truth for customer data

Bringing all of your customer data together into one single source of truth (SSoT) makes it that much easier to protect. It also speeds access when a user logs in, as no matter which property they’re using, it has only one place to look to find their credentials, rather than scouring multiple data silos.

3. Single sign-on

Customers want low-friction experiences online, and being able to create an account using credentials they already have is a great way to win them over. Single sign-on (using account information from a provider like Apple, Facebook, or Twitter) allows a customer to create an account on your site quickly and easily, and without the need to create and remember a new password.

4. Breach protection

The issue of passwords brings us to a major sticking point for many identity solutions, protecting user information from data breaches. According to the most recent IBM/Ponemon Cost of a Data Breach Study, the global average cost of a breach is now $3.86 million (USD). And Verizon reports in their 2021 Data Breach Investigations Report that 61% of breaches involve misuse of credentials. Put those together, and you see why protecting your customers’ information is such a major piece of scaling your online business presence and why a robust identity solution needs to take this aspect into account.

5. Protection from staffing fluctuations

An often overlooked aspect of identity projects is the simple fact that people change jobs. If you have an identity tool that was developed in-house two years ago, there’s a good chance you won’t have anyone on staff who can expand it to cover your new properties. That will delay roll-out and extend your time-to-market.

Auth0 customer WABI is modernizing e-commerce in Latin America. They’re currently active in 11 countries and have expansion plans to add four more in 2021. And they’re trusting Auth0 to scale their identity solution to match these ambitious plans. “WABI is scalable, and we need a partner that is, too. We believe Auth0 will support us in getting there.” Says WABI Business Manager Juan Manuel Mingo. With their planned expansion opening their market to millions of potential new customers, WABI knows they need a robust identity platform that’s ready to handle the influx of new users.

Auth0 Brings Global Experience to Your Latin America Growth Plans

Our founders are from Argentina, the company was started in the United States, and we currently have people in 30+ countries with more being added every day. Our international team of identity specialists can help you work out your identity needs and help get you set up with an identity as a service (IDaaS) platform that is ready to grow with your company, no matter what your expansion plans look like. We know that having an identity solution designed to be extensible and flexible to move with your business can mean the difference between a successful rollout or a failed acquisition attempt.

Auth0 is built on open standards, making it easy to connect with existing systems and varying infrastructure scenarios. Bridging the gap between a public cloud-based web app and an on-prem user database is only the beginning. Our extensive marketplace of integrations means you can connect with your existing business software solutions as well.

Our breach protection includes features such as bot detection, adaptive MFA, single sign-on, and passwordless flows. And the Auth0 Marketplace has what you need to handle everything from consent management to business process software integrations. The protections and extensibility we offer is a key factor in our scalability.

When the time comes to expand across borders, Auth0 is ready. We’re certified by a third party as compliant with the International Standards Organization (ISO) standards ISO27001 and ISO27018 for handling information security and personally identifiable information (PII) as a cloud provider.

Auth0 is the Identity Solution That Can Keep Up With The Growing LatAm Market

To provide your customers with a continuous, low-friction, and intuitive login flow requires a robust identity solution. Whether you’re scaling internationally or your growth plans call for staying closer to home, Auth0 can provide the IDaaS platform you need to maintain a great customer experience while ensuring the security and privacy of your customer data. And don’t worry if you’ve already started an identity project and hit a stumbling block, our experts can help.