Michelle Agroskin

Michelle Agroskin is a Staff Product Marketing Manager for Okta. She leads the Customer Identity AI, Authorization, and Consumer portfolios; driving go-to-market strategy, messaging, launches, and strategic growth initiatives.

She lives in NYC and in her free time, loves to travel the world and try new restaurants!

Staff Product Marketing Manager, Auth0

Assess your business's AI Agent readiness. Use this checklist to master the unique AI security challenges autonomous agents pose to customer identity and data access.

Is Your Business Ready for AI Agents? The Ultimate AI Security Checklist for Customer Identity

Bradford Peirce

Product Marketing Manager, Retail

From sign-in to checkout, Auth0 and Shopify team up to create a more secure, effortless login experience for shoppers.

Shopify + Auth0: A New Era for Retail Customer Identity

Is your AI agent strategy truly secure? Discover how robust customer identity and access management (CIAM) can build trust and protect your business.

Four Identity Security Essentials for a Trusted AI Agent Strategy

NickApostolu

Nick Apostolu is a Staff Product Marketing Manager at Okta, empowering healthcare organizations to harness IAM solutions to meet critical business goals like optimizing the patient experience, strengthening their security posture, increasing clinician efficiencies, and cutting costs. Prior to joining Okta, Nick has spent the majority of his career at healthcare technology organizations as a product marketer with primary focus areas of revenue cycle management, payments, and population health analytics.

Staff Product Marketing Manager, Healthcare

Nick Apostolu

Discover how customer identity and access management (CIAM) is essential for securing AI-powered healthcare systems. 

The Future of Healthcare Is AI-Powered and Secure: How CIAM Builds Trust

AlexSilk

ISV Success Manager

Alex Silk

Discover how Auth0's new wave of Enterprise-Ready Identity solutions attract buyers, raise the security bar, and reduce customer onboarding costs via seamless integration.

Enterprise-Ready Identity 2.0: How SaaS Builders Stand Out with Auth0

Why retail and hospitality’s medium and long-term future will belong to brands that modernize customer identity.

## The Silent Bottleneck Between Login and Checkout

An unknown customer lands on your site after seeing a positive review of your products. They browse, add two items to their cart, and then meet a mandatory account-creation wall. A 60-second decision becomes a 70% chance of cart abandonment.

The current state of online conversion:

* **70%** global cart abandonment rate (source: [Baymard](https://www.statista.com/statistics/477804/online-shopping-cart-abandonment-rate-worldwide/), 2025)
* **26%** of U.S. shoppers abandon online carts when they must **create an account** (source: [Baymard](https://www.statista.com/statistics/1228452/reasons-for-abandonments-during-checkout-united-states/), 2024)
* **22%** of U.S. shoppers abandon online carts because checkout feels **too long or complicated** (source: [Baymard](https://www.statista.com/statistics/1228452/reasons-for-abandonments-during-checkout-united-states/), 2024)

Each statistic points to the same friction: identity. When digital identity is operated by legacy login boxes, home-grown databases, and bolted-on loyalty platforms, the customer experience breaks down at the very moment transactions are supposed to occur. 

Retail and hospitality companies have invested heavily in product curation, last-mile delivery, and ad-tech spending. Yet many still rely on yesterday’s sign-in infrastructure, which can lead to missed opportunities for conversion. 

<include src="TweetQuote" quoteText="The moment you ask a shopper to create an account, you risk losing the sale — identity shouldn’t be a barrier to conversion." />

## Turning Every Guest Into a Known Customer

Modern customer identity solutions make every shopper feel known and every interaction frictionless and secure, whether the customer is an unknown guest or an avid loyalty member. By assigning and seamlessly upgrading identity from the first interaction, retailers can move shoppers effortlessly along the marketing funnel and trade anonymous traffic for loyal, data-rich advocates.

### Unknown shoppers: “Let me buy and go.”

Even before a customer shares a single detail, identity can create a customer ID the moment they add an item to the cart. This anonymous token lets the site remember what’s in the basket across pages and devices, calculate taxes accurately, and surface real-time inventory — no account required. The checkout page can still be one-click to let impulse purchases sail through instead of stalling at a registration wall.

### Known Shoppers: “Recognize me next time.”

If that same visitor opts to save an email or phone number, their transient ID is promoted to a persistent profile. Progressive profiling then adds detail only when there’s value in return: shipping address at first delivery and phone number or favorite store when they enable location. Each datapoint sharpens recommendations, auto-fills forms, and routes service calls faster, while the customer feels in control because friction stays low.

### Loyalty Members: “Reward me for my relationship.”

When a shopper finally joins the loyalty program, the existing profile simply gains a rewards wallet and tier status; they don’t start over. Every sign-in—whether passkey on mobile, QR code at POS, or voice ID in the call center—pulls the same record so points post instantly, birthday offers appear at checkout, and a lost gift card is reissued in seconds. The brand sees its lifetime value climb, and the customer sees tangible recognition at every touchpoint.

## One Shopper, One Identity

Modern consumers are omnichannel. They browse products on their phones, book curb-side pickup from a laptop, scan QR codes in-store, and text customer support about delayed shipments.

When each touchpoint requires a separate sign-in, retailers lose continuity.

* Call-center reps can’t see last night’s mobile order.
* In-store associates can’t apply coupons issued online.
* Brand families (think specialty banners under one parent) can’t recognize that the same household buys across all of them.

Unified identity fixes that. Whether a shopper uses social login on the web, a passkey in the mobile app, or gives their phone number to a concierge, the same profile lights up. Purchase history, preferences, loyalty tier, and service notes follow them everywhere. This turns omnichannel relationships into one coherent brand experience and fragmented customer data into unified insights. 

<include src="TweetQuote" quoteText="When identity is unified, every channel, every login, and every interaction becomes a seamless extension of the customer journey." />

## Customer Data and Insights

Third-party cookies are fading, and privacy regulations are tightening each year. The safest, most durable way to understand your shoppers is first-party and zero-party data, which can’t be stitched together unless they share a common identity key.

When modern identity powers sign up and sign in, every interaction is automatically married to the right profile. Retail and hospitality organizations can then feed that clean data into their customer data platforms (CDPs), customer relationship management (CRM) tools, or marketing clouds to produce holistic, consent-driven customer insights that unlock targeted outreach and tailor-made experiences. 

Customer identity acts as a single source of truth for customer data by capturing:

1. Identifiers a user provides when creating an account
2. Locales, devices, and IPs a user logs in from
3. Number of times a user logs in
4. Applications the user is logging in to
5. Risk profile of the login that the user completed
6. A verified email or phone number used during the authentication challenge

By sharing this data with downstream systems like CDPs, retailers can boost business outcomes across the entire organization.

* Marketing teams can better power analytics to gauge conversion and derive benefits from clean, trusted data.
* Customer support agents can leverage login activity to better serve customers.
* Security teams can use transactional data to diagnose a potential account breach.

## Personalization

A coffee chain turns every mobile order into next-drink suggestions. A cosmetic retailer pulls a shopper’s digital history at the register. A major hotel brand sequences emails to match each guest’s trip-planning stage. This is personalized retail. And this is how brands make customers feel known. 

However, you can’t personalize experiences if you can’t identify who the experience is for. Loyalty IDs, guest-checkout emails, in-store POS accounts and call-center records often live in disconnected silos, leaving tens of millions of customer identities fragmented across systems. Anonymous web visits keep piling up because lengthy registration and account creation processes aren’t worth it.

By unifying every sign-in, loyalty login, mobile browse, and in-store purchase under a single digital identity, retailers can recognize shoppers the instant they appear and provide context-rich data to recommendation engines, email platforms, POS tablets, and service desks in real time. 

Armed with customer preferences, sizes, household details, and spend history, brands can turn generic shopping journeys into uniquely personalized experiences.

<include src="TweetQuote" quoteText="Personalization begins with recognition — and recognition starts with a modern identity strategy." />

## Protecting Accounts, Points, and Brand Equity

For retailers and hospitality brands, the login box has become both a front door for loyal guests and the preferred entry point for bad actors. Fraudsters can simply harvest or guess credentials and stroll in as “customers,” siphoning stored credit-card numbers, wallets, gift cards, and even millions of dollars in loyalty points that now function like digital currency.

Many merchants now operate similarly to banks, holding vast troves of personally identifiable information and liquid value. Yet they’re expected to greet every visitor with a one-click checkout and zero friction.

The only sustainable way to mitigate these threats is to treat customer identity as the security perimeter. A modern identity platform inspects each login in real time — device reputation, IP risk, behavior patterns — and silently steps up defenses only when signals look suspicious. Low-risk shoppers sail through with a passkey or social login; high-risk attempts trigger adaptive MFA, CAPTCHA, or outright blocking. 

## The Bottom Line

Customer identity is a critical component of retail and hospitality customer experiences, and the organizations that invest in getting it right will be better positioned for growth.

* **Loyalty membership** increases when registration becomes effortless.
* **Omnichannel** becomes unified when every touchpoint recognizes the same person.
* **Marketing ROI** climbs as customer data quality increases.
* **Personalization** becomes much easier to implement and makes customers feel known.
* **Security** strengthens, preserving customer data and brand trust.

These outcomes aren’t future tech; they’re what retailers and hospitality groups unlock the moment they treat customer identity as a strategic part of their tech stack and not just a login box. If your growth roadmap includes deeper loyalty engagement, channel expansion, or AI-driven personalization, start by asking: **Is my customer identity infrastructure ready?** Learn how to [grow your retail business with identity](https://auth0.com/retail).

▸ Begin your [free trial today](https://auth0.com/signup?type=button&place=hero&text=contact%20sales).

Identity: The Critical Link in Retail and Hospitality’s Digital Future

Nesh Popovic

As a Developer and Solutions Engineer for the past 20+ years, I've been involved in developing and selling secure and robust software solutions. When not helping my sales team deal with the complexities of software platforms, you can usually find me playing pickleball, basketball or backgammon.

Principal Solutions Engineer - CIAM

Learn how to set up an Amazon API Gateway and secure the REST API with Okta Customer Identity Cloud (CIC) Adaptive MFA Risk Score

Protecting REST APIs Behind Amazon API Gateway Using Okta

eric wu

With over 7 years of experience in product marketing, I am passionate about creating and delivering impactful marketing strategies that drive customer value, business growth, and competitive differentiation. I have a strong background in launching new products, especially in Security, Generative AI and Cloud domains, where I have led several successful end-to-end product releases. I currently work as a Staff Product Marketing Manager at Okta, a leading identity and access management platform that empowers organizations to securely connect their people and technology.

Eric Wu

SaaStart allows devs to easily explore, gain experience with, and demonstrate key Customer Identity functionality

Getting started with Customer Identity and Access Management (CIAM) — especially for B2B SaaS apps — can be intimidating. What began as a fairly straightforward login box has grown into a comprehensive set of capabilities encompassing authentication, authorization, user lifecycle management, federation, and Identity security — all of which must comply with [a daunting array of ever-evolving regulations and standards](https://auth0.com/security).

At the same time, there’s no substitute for learning through hands-on experience. But the reality is that devs are already under enough time constraints and don’t always have the luxury of building sandboxes or proofs-of-concept from scratch.

That’s why we’re excited to unveil [SaaStart](https://saastart.app/), a reference B2B SaaS application built using Next.js and Auth0 by Okta.

Intended primarily for developers building B2B SaaS apps, [SaaStart](https://saastart.app/) provides a fast, safe, and accessible way for devs to explore, experiment, and get up and running with Customer Identity. You can easily deploy a sample Auth0 template from within [the SaaStart GitHub repository](https://github.com/auth0-developer-hub/auth0-b2b-saas-starter).

## Get Hands-on with Customer Identity

In Identity terms, essential features of an effective B2B CIAM solution include:

* **User registration**, to create the record that makes everything else possible
* **Authentication,** to establish with confidence that the users logging into accounts are who they say they are, using one or more factors to do so
* **Authorization,** to help organizations provide a user with the appropriate level of access to resources or applications
* **Delegated administration,** to enable customers and administrators to make updates and changes to users’ data and access

But — just as describing a car as a combination of engine, drivetrain, wheels, and steering mechanism is woefully insufficient at capturing what you can do with one or how to build one — simply summarizing these Identity elements doesn’t come close to telling the CIAM story.

To help fill in the blanks with practical experience, [SaaStart](https://saastart.app/) allows devs to explore CIAM within the look, feel, and functionality of a modern B2B SaaS application.

Using [SaaStart](https://saastart.app/), devs can get hands-on with:

* **Multi-tenant access control,** including administrative roles with control over the app’s configuration

![SaaStart](https://images.ctfassets.net/23aumh6u8s0i/19r62j5wQAyA9WaC03j62T/d4bc78054cbb4e4843d5154a4b8261be/Uploaded_from_Speed_up_Your_Customer_Identity_Journey_with_Auth0_SaaStart)

![SaaStart](https://images.ctfassets.net/23aumh6u8s0i/2g4TA8C7AkVObsBT9LTx4t/57a14e32fb52f571d52db9503c9b0653/Uploaded_from_Speed_up_Your_Customer_Identity_Journey_with_Auth0_SaaStart)

<br>

* **Log-in options for the modern extended workforce,** including Single Sign-On (SSO) for enterprise employees and email-based authentication for early adopters and smaller customers without their own Identity Providers

![SaaStart](https://images.ctfassets.net/23aumh6u8s0i/2HdILnTFaOOb7jfePCuJhG/57087f523ecea46c6a8ee89e5f13d6f0/Uploaded_from_Speed_up_Your_Customer_Identity_Journey_with_Auth0_SaaStart)

* **Security policies,** from enforcing a range of Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) options and domain-based SSO to configuring session timeouts

![SaaStart](https://images.ctfassets.net/23aumh6u8s0i/35qq2OrUXesaKoxdSyX3ww/5990471670bd41b204cfe0b8d742ba8f/Uploaded_from_Speed_up_Your_Customer_Identity_Journey_with_Auth0_SaaStart)

* **User provisioning,** including just-in-time provisioning or automated user management using the System for Cross-Domain Identity Management (SCIM) - _coming soon_

* **API client management** with self-service create/delete capabilities - _coming soon_

## Everything Developers Need to Implement Customer Identity

SaaStart is just a taste of what’s possible with Auth0 by Okta.

With 10+ years as a pioneer in the CIAM space, we’ve leveraged cutting-edge technologies and architectures to create [a modern solution with an impressive collection of features and functions](https://auth0.com/blog/why-auth0-by-okta/).

Whether you’re building a B2C, B2B, or Hybrid application, Auth0 provides the foundational requirements out of the box with broad support for [open standards](https://auth0.com/learn/how-auth0-uses-identity-industry-standards) and a range of developer resources — including [Quickstarts](https://auth0.com/docs/quickstarts), [APIs](https://auth0.com/docs/api), and [30+ SDKs](https://auth0.com/docs/libraries).

In fact, with a few lines of code, you can integrate Auth0 into any app written in any language and any framework.

Plus, we’re proud to offer a number of discounted offerings that can help you get started and — thanks to a long list of features — are often sufficient for the longer term:

* Self-service options, including a [free trial plan](https://auth0.com/signup) that lets you get off the ground with up to 7,500 active users and unlimited logins — while also including social login, DB connection for securely storing Identity information, branded login, extensibility, and security capabilities (brute force and suspicious IP throttling), support for five regions (US, UK, EU, JP, AUS), and even passkeys
* [Auth0 for Startups](https://auth0.com/startups), which brings the convenience and security of Auth0 to eligible startup customers so they can focus on their core value propositions rather than spending more time than is necessary on Identity
* Our [Nonprofit Offering](https://auth0.com/nonprofits/get-started), which provides preferential pricing that makes the leading Identity service even more accessible to organizations on a mission to make the world a better place

## Speed up Time-to-Market with Auth0

We understand that developers would rather spend their time solving hard problems and leveraging their creative side to build really fun solutions. Auth0 enables you to do those by offloading some of the more mundane and frankly dull parts of creating a standards-based CIAM solution.

And [there’s ample evidence](https://auth0.com/customers) that outsourcing Customer Identity is the prudent approach. For instance, Okta’s 2023 report [How Development Teams Purchase SaaS](https://www.okta.com/resources/whitepaper-how-development-teams-purchase-saas-report/thankyou/) revealed that:

* **Authentication takes the third-most time and work to build and maintain in-house**, behind only “data management and storage” and “DevOps tooling and automation.”
* **Third-party authentication reduces time to market more than any other SaaS component** — 88% of organizations that use a third-party SaaS platform for authentication report reducing time to market

We invite you to visit our [Developer Center](https://developer.auth0.com/) to learn about Auth0, explore tutorials, download code samples, connect with us, find resources, and more.

If you have feedback about SaaStart or suggest other features to explore in future versions or new apps, please drop us a comment or open an issue on [the GitHub repo](https://github.com/auth0-developer-hub/auth0-b2b-saas-starter).

<include 
    src="LinkCard" 
    title="A B2B SaaS Application Primer Using Auth0" 
    link="https://auth0.com/blog/b2b-saas-application-primer-using-auth0/" 
    description="Are you building a B2B SaaS application using Auth0? Then check out our primer for more on delivering IAM functionality using the Auth0 Organizations feature."
img="https://images.ctfassets.net/23aumh6u8s0i/44Jbuzdh6CvHDaCJ6LJNLh/2a8d0114b1bd7b03a92a386cced73e6b/square-hero.jpg"
/>

Speed up Your Customer Identity Journey with Auth0 SaaStart

Calah Vargas

Calah Vargas is the Associate Manager of Product Led Growth, focusing on nonprofits, startups, and partnerships. She works on product marketing and customer marketing initiatives. Outside work, you can find her cooking, trying new restaurants, and traveling with friends and family.

Associate Manager, PLG

Upgrading made easy: from in-house authentication to modern login flows, flexible user profiles, and the convenience and security of passkey

Imagine you’re working on a monolithic application that includes a home-grown authentication system. Over the years, the authentication function has received upgrades here and there to improve security and to stay reasonably up-to-date in a changing world.

Sooner or later — perhaps triggered by considering different growth paths and how best to make use of developer time — you start to recognize that your in-house Identity stack is a limiting factor:

* Integrating with partners and other technology components requires custom work
* Maintenance obligations are distracting from work on your core app
* Meeting regulatory requirements for privacy is an ongoing challenge 
* Providing different access privileges to different types of end users is becoming more complicated than ever anticipated
* With every breach headline, you’re reminded of the constant need to strengthen security

Shopper Approved found themselves in a similar situation — in 2017, the company’s ambitions were outgrowing the home-grown Customer Identity capabilities of their monolithic PHP app.

With that realization, the search was for a third-party authentication solution.

# Why Shopper Approved chose Auth0 by Okta 

Since its launch in 2010, [Shopper Approved](https://www.shopperapproved.com/) has helped over 20,000 eCommerce brands — from mom-and-pop shops to global enterprises — generate more online trust, visibility, and conversions.

> “We knew we wanted to replace our login and authentication mechanism, and we needed a solution that would ‘tango’ with our [Laravel](https://laravel.com/) front-end templating engine,” Christopher Budge, Shopper Approved’s CTO recalled, “but we didn't know which direction we wanted to go in.”

<include src="QuoteCard" body="The Self-Service pricing was really attractive to us. The other providers that we found were prohibitively expensive for what was initially an experimental project, and not a lot of them had the adaptability that we needed to integrate into our existing application." name="Christopher Budge" title="CTO" team="" company="Shopper Approved" />

While searching online for ideas and options, Budge came across Auth0 — and, in particular, the Self-Service plans.

> “The other providers that we found were prohibitively expensive for what was initially an experimental project, and not a lot of them had the adaptability that we needed to integrate into our existing application.”

The Self-Service option gave Budge and the wider team plenty of time to perform due diligence. “_We looked for a long time before ultimately deciding upon Auth0,_” he shared. “_The more I dug into it, the better it looked._”

The ability to explore the solution in a hands-on manner, without a commitment, helped the team to make an informed choice. Budge explained that:

<include src="QuoteCard" body="I got together with our technical lead and programming contractor, and they started playing with it — and then they said, 'Yeah, we think this is going to work." name="Christopher Budge" title="CTO" team="" company="Shopper Approved" />

While every organization’s Identity journey is unique, here’s how Shopper Approved implemented Auth0.

## Migrating Users from the Legacy System to Auth0	

No matter how much preparation is done, a migration is always a nervy thing. As it turns out, those nerves were unnecessary — Shopper Approved’s migration from their legacy, home-grown authentication system to Auth0 went off without a hitch.

Budge recalled, “_We weren't sure how well our system would adapt to having its old authentication system ripped out and something new put in its place, but the migration actually exceeded expectations. Within 24 hours, we were able to ingest our entire user database into Auth0 and have them set up as users able to log in._”

However, migrating users was simply the foundation for modernizing the experience for Shopper Approved’s customers, with Budge adding, “_The universal login allows for such a smooth application login and flow. And our marketing team has really appreciated the customization and branding options that allow us to deliver a better customer experience._”

### Letting quickstarts guide the way

One of the first things Budge’s team did was explore Auth0’s step-by-step [quickstart guides](https://auth0.com/docs/quickstarts) to get a feel for the overall migration process.

“The quickstart guides were dead easy. Plus, between your host documentation and the notes in GitHub, it’s really, really easy as a developer to figure out ‘where am I and where do I need to go?’” and ‘What’s next?’”

![quickstarts](https://images.ctfassets.net/23aumh6u8s0i/58lZcrqemW0dCDEIrlLxef/fd17a831afcbbe647abd73d3420e9d95/01-migration.png)

### Leveraging SDKs

SDKs reduce the developer effort required to implement specific use cases, and Budge’s team found exactly what they needed among Auth0’s 40+ SDK libraries.

“Your SDKs are written really well, and your APIs are documented really well. So, code-wise, it’s extremely easy to interact with the platform — you can get going and don’t really have to think hard about it.”

![SDKs](https://images.ctfassets.net/23aumh6u8s0i/1cSZQDXlQ1VDHD7RFG71vu/6922a4a4409f3bab6453b7b48f12541e/02-migration.png)

## Building User Profiles

User data can come from many sources, including your own databases as well as social, legal, and enterprise identity providers. Some examples include Google, Facebook, Active Directory, and SAML.

In Shopper Approved’s case, there was an added complication — practically every user profile that had ever been created in their system still existed, and collectively, many of these profiles had inconsistent and incomplete data. But, perhaps counterintuitively, the upgrade actually presented an opportunity to clean up the user database. Budge’s migration script identified existing user records that were poorly formatted, allowing the team to quickly correct any issues — ultimately improving the overall structure of the company’s user data and laying a strong foundation for efficient scalability.

“The way your user profiles are set up — they’re just really easy to understand, manipulate, and customize. The data structure was easy to map to what we had and what we needed.” Maybe even more importantly, Budge recalled that “It just worked. When we were playing around with it, we saw that it does exactly what [your documentation](https://auth0.com/docs/manage-users/user-accounts/user-profiles) says it does.”

![User Profiles](https://images.ctfassets.net/23aumh6u8s0i/3EfvAVkkj9Ornz9JcTH5CJ/1783bd310eb0cd0722dbbe754aa606c4/03-migration.png)

## Innovating With Identity: Exploring Passkeys

The Identity domain is always evolving, with new specifications, standards, and [regulatory requirements](https://auth0.com/security) frequently appearing.

Unsurprisingly, one of the reasons why Budge was so eager to introduce a leading off-the-shelf solution was that it would allow the company to keep pace with these changes — while at the same time allowing the team to apply their finite resources on their core value proposition. In short, he knew that choosing Auth0 meant that Shopper Approved’s CIAM needs would be met today, tomorrow, and as far into the future as he could imagine.

Like many CTOs, Budge had closely been following [passkeys](https://learnpasskeys.io/) — FIDO credentials that are discoverable by browsers or housed within native applications to enable — and was excited by their potential to provide [a highly secure and very convenient user authentication experience](https://auth0.com/blog/webauthn-and-passkeys-for-developers/).

> “I’ve been watching passkeys for a long time, and — literally the day I got [the announcement that they were available](https://auth0.com/blog/activate-passkeys-let-users-log-in-without-password/) — I jumped right in. We really enjoyed rolling them out early to our organization, and we’ve had zero issues. And it’s great that we didn’t have to build passkey support ourselves!”
> _Christopher Budge_

![Passkeys](https://images.ctfassets.net/23aumh6u8s0i/3qOGVNCBexcnp5LqxkAcNB/7a0c5eaa7bdb2cd37987795f7a504712/passkeys.png)

## Enjoying Ongoing Value

Budge’s hopes for lower support and maintenance obligations have come to fruition. “We have not had to spend a single development hour at all on user authentication and login — it's never failed, and it's never broken.”

Similarly, the upgraded security is evident. 

> “We've had many security researchers and penetration testers try to break in. Every time they run smack-dab into Auth0.”

<include src="QuoteCard" body="We have not had to spend a single development hour at all on user authentication and login — it's never failed, and it's never broken." name="Christopher Budge" title="CTO" team="" company="Shopper Approved" />

### Get started in minutes — for free — with no humans (other than yourself) required!

We’ve always tried to make things less complex for developers, which is why [our Self-Service plans](https://auth0.com/pricing) allow you to create a trial account with nothing more than an email address. During your 22-day trial period, you can create a simple app, configure its look and behavior, and explore the Auth0 solution in detail — giving you plenty of time to really get your hands dirty.

![Get started](https://images.ctfassets.net/23aumh6u8s0i/3s3e2u6XsF3BitzYgE3TpY/1097a71343e41a488444684c12c2c248/identity_journey.png)

Plus, anyone using our products can take advantage of resources including [quickstarts](https://auth0.com/docs/quickstarts), [40+ SDKs](https://auth0.com/docs/libraries), [detailed guides](https://developer.auth0.com/resources/guides/web-app/nextjs/saas-basic-authentication), and [extensive (but easy-to-follow) documentation](https://auth0.com/docs/articles) to help get started and implement a strong Customer Identity function.

In fact, with only a few lines of code, you can have Auth0 integrated into any app, written in any language, and in any framework.

[Try for free](https://auth0.com/signup?utm_source=whitepaper&utm_medium=auth0&utm_campaign=whyauth0) and see for yourself.


A Customer Identity Migration Journey

Shreya Gupta

Shreya is the Developer Advocate for Auth0 for Startups. She previously founded a non-profit called Bit Project, worked at a YC-backed Startup as a Developer Advocate, and currently hosts The Developer Diaries podcast. Through each experience, she has found her love for building resources and tools that help move the needle for developers. Outside of work, she enjoys traveling, watching K-Dramas, and drinking boba.

Developer Advocate, Startups

How to Evaluate a Customer Identity and Auth Solution

Why Auth0?

Samuel Frank

Sam Frank is Auth0's Sr. Product Manager for new initiatives. He works within the Auth0 Lab to commercialize the team's new ideas so they're available for builders everywhere. As a former platform product manager and startup product lead, he knows the challenges that developers face when creating new apps and he leverages those experiences to focus our teams efforts delivering the next generation of identity tools.

Senior Product Manager

The Customer Identity Cloud platform can now reference NFTs as profile data and as a means to grant access.

The [Auth0 Lab team](http://labs.auth0.com/) has released a pair of [Marketplace integrations](https://auth0.com/marketplace) bringing more [Web3 capabilities](https://marketplace.auth0.com/categories/web3) to the Okta Customer Identity Cloud ecosystem. As the Web3 ecosystem matures, we’re finding that on-chain data, like NFTs (non-fungible tokens), can be used in the identity ecosystem. 

[Our integration](https://marketplace.auth0.com/integrations/auth-0-inc-fetch-nfts) is a simple NFT fetch [Action](https://auth0.com/docs/customize/actions) that retrieves a list of NFTs the user owns. With them, you can make all sorts of IAM-based decisions. If you’re interested in the Auth0 Lab team’s continued Web3 research, come join the conversation on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/Auth0Lab) and [Discord](https://discord.gg/xkbkz9rZcD).

## NFTs in Identity and Access Management (IAM)

By now, you’ve probably heard of NFTs. If not, here [is a helpful explainer](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/03/18/technology/nft-guide.html). At their core, NFTs are digitally transferable tokens. Tokens have a long history in identity and access management. They are the keystone of authorization in many apps, primarily through the issuance of [JSON web tokens](https://jwt.io/). 

NFTs could be a big extension to token-based IAM. NFTs are flexible, secure, and easily transferable by their nature of using blockchain consensus algorithms to establish ownership and transference. Like with cryptocurrencies, only a specific private key in a wallet can prove ownership. They can help organizations manage capacity problems because you can limit the number of NFTs you mint. This scarcity helps manage supply while still allowing for a robust secondary market. This makes them ideal for ticketed events and venues, like stadiums, trains, and other physically limited spaces.

One of the biggest barriers to mainstream NFT adoption is the usability hurdle of working with blockchains. With our latest integrations, Auth0 Lab seeks to make it easy. Developers can query a user’s NFTs and incorporate them as identity data in their applications, even controlling access based on a user’s ownership of an NFT. We’re excited to see how developers use these new tools when implementing web3 functionality into their applications.

## Token Gating

[Token Gating](https://tokenizedhq.com/token-gating/) is the practice of managing access to resources based on a user’s Web3 NFTs. Notable examples include [‘members only’ communities](https://rarible.com/blog/9-membership-nfts/) of NFT collectors. This exclusivity extends to video games like [Alien Worlds](https://alienworlds.io/), the [largest web3 game](https://www.statista.com/statistics/1266486/blockchain-games-user-number/) at the end of 2022. NFTs are central to the game and unlock certain content, or game locations are only accessible with specific NFTs. [TravelX](https://travelx.io/) is working on another use case around airline tickets.

Token gating is interesting because of the openness of the attestation. Instead of IAM data being stored on a proprietary server, it’s on a public blockchain for anyone to use and see. We’re just witnessing the first experiments in how that data is used. 

## EVM Compatible, Open Source Coming Soon

The current integration works on all [Ethereum virtual machine (EVM) compatible](https://gocrypto.com/en/what-are-evm-compatible-blockchains/) blockchains. This means you’ll have access to NFTs available on some of the largest NFT marketplaces like [OpenSea](https://opensea.io/). You’ll be able to pull from [Ethereum](https://ethereum.org/en/), [Polygon](https://polygon.technology/), [Avalanche](https://www.avax.network/), [Binance Smart Chain](https://www.bnbchain.org/en), and others. EVM blockchains are the oldest programmable blockchains, and the ecosystem is well supported.

The Auth0 Lab team is working on open-source the code so it can be modified and moved to other blockchain platforms. That process takes some time, so keep an eye out by following us on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/Auth0Lab) or heading to our [GitHub organization](https://github.com/auth0-lab) and give it a follow.

## Unlocking NFTs for Your Application

### How it Works

The Auth0 Lab [fetch-nfts integration](https://marketplace.auth0.com/integrations/auth-0-inc-fetch-nfts) works by relying on a few other pieces of infrastructure.

1. It utilizes the [Sign in with Ethereum integration](https://auth0.com/blog/sign-in-with-ethereum-siwe-now-available-on-auth0/) that SpruceID released in the Auth0 Marketplace in 2022. This allows the integration to grab a public blockchain address for the user, which is critical to querying an NFT smart contract to know if they own an NFT. If a user logs in with a method other than Sign in with Ethereum, NFTs won’t be fetched.
2. During [setup and configuration](https://marketplace.auth0.com/integrations/auth-0-inc-fetch-nfts?tab=install), specify a list of NFT contracts that you’d like the [Auth0 Actions](https://auth0.com/actions) code to query. You’ll also need to specify an API key for [The Graph](https://thegraph.com/en/), a service that queries blockchain data.
3. With a public key in hand, and a list of NFT contracts to search, the Actions code calls out to The Graph’s APIs to query the necessary NFT contracts. It returns a list of caip-22 asset references that your Action adds to the [ID token](https://auth0.com/docs/secure/tokens/id-tokens) as claims.
4. From there, you can utilize the data in your application to make any decision, like token gating access, that you feel necessary!

### Installation

Check out our [installation](https://marketplace.auth0.com/integrations/auth-0-inc-fetch-nfts?tab=install) guide to get started!

## What’s Next?

The Auth0 Lab team is actively exploring the best ways to enable developers to build applications that rely on Web3 identity constructs and help bridge the Web2 and Web3 worlds. You can follow our progress on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/auth0lab). If you’re interested in speaking with the team, join our [Discord](https://discord.gg/xkbkz9rZcD) and start a thread.

The [Auth0 Marketplace](https://marketplace.auth0.com/) is looking for Web3 partners to build new extensions onto Auth0. Visit [https://auth0.com/integrate](https://auth0.com/integrate) to learn more.

Web3 NFTs for Identity and Access Control, Now Available on Marketplace

shiven_ramji

Shiv is an experienced product executive and builder obsessed with creating beautiful products. He is the President of Auth0 at Okta, managing a $1B ARR business and overseeing the company’s product, data, security, and technology strategy and execution. Before Auth0 and Okta, Shiv was the SVP of Product at DigitalOcean, leading DigitalOcean’s products, pricing, and partnerships. Additionally, Shiv has held product leadership positions at global brands, including Amazon, NBCUniversal, LiveIntent, and The Nielsen Company. Shiv was the recipient of the 2023 Top Global CPO Award by the Products That Count community.

Beyond his current corporate focus, Shiv is deeply committed to fostering entrepreneurship and innovation, particularly in Africa. He is an active angel investor and startup advisor and also serves on the boards of [**Products That Count**](https://productsthatcount.com/) and [**Aiven.io**](http://Aiven.io).


President, Auth0

Shiven Ramji

Win business customers with enterprise-ready Identity

**TL;DR:** Okta has launched the [Auth0](https://www.okta.com/press-room/press-releases/okta-introduces-okta-customer-identity-cloud-to-help-businesses-grow-user/), powered by Auth0, with support for two use cases: Consumer Apps and SaaS Apps. This article explores the SaaS Apps use case and capabilities, as well as how product and engineering leaders can accelerate growth with an identity solution built for business customers.

The Software as a Service (SaaS) market is booming, with new products coming online every day. The average number of apps companies use increased to 89 this year, with as many as 187 for larger companies, according to [Okta’s Businesses at Work 2022 report](https://www.okta.com/businesses-at-work/).

All of this growth has created intense competition in the SaaS space. The companies that will win are the ones who can successfully onboard business customers quickly and move upmarket while remaining hyper-focused on their core product. 

In identity and access management terms, this is called customer identity: Learning about your customers and securely building consent-based trust by understanding who they are and how they want to engage with you.

Historically, there have been very limited customer identity options on the market for the SaaS use case, and product and engineering leaders end up using some combination of consumer and workforce identity solutions.

What if you didn’t have to use baling wire and duct tape? Could identity help you capture your market opportunity–instead of slowing you down?

## Customer Identity for SaaS Apps, Simplified 

Auth0 for SaaS Apps enables every app builder to become enterprise-ready and accelerate growth without having to become an identity expert. SaaS-specific capabilities like Enterprise Federation, Delegated Administration, Multi-factor Authentication (MFA), custom branding, and security features are available out of the box. And our robust identity product roadmap means we’re constantly innovating for you, too.

“Kandji is committed to being a pioneer in the future of work by helping companies manage their Apple devices at scale,” said Weldon Dodd, senior vice president of Product Strategy at [Kandji](https://auth0.com/case-studies/kandji). “Delivering the best experience for our customers means making onboarding as slick as possible, managing and customizing workflows, and providing the most secure experience from both an administrator and end-user perspective. We did all of this with Auth0 four times as fast as our DIY solution. And it’s working–we’re already seeing customer revenue trending up.” 

Here are a few of the ways our customers, like Kandji, Blackboard, and TripActions, are using SaaS Apps today.

### Acquire and Onboard New Customers

As your business scales, you want to streamline the onboarding process to your applications, so business customers can start using your product quickly and collaborating with their coworkers. This increases your “stickiness.” With our APIs and SDKs, you can build **Self-Service Onboarding** directly into your application so that your customers can provision access control, set up Single Sign-On (SSO), and invite other members of their organization without burdening your engineering team.

### Personalize Experiences For Your Customers

Technical teams can spend weeks configuring identity manually for each new customer, with lots of back-and-forths to implement changes. **Organizations** is our toolset that helps SaaS companies manage and model identity for business customers as organizations (under a single tenant). It allows you to provide last-mile customization on a per-organization basis to ensure the authentication experience meets their needs, including enterprise federation with any source, account provisioning, onboarding and migration flows, customized branding, and security policies that meet the most stringent requirements.

### Achieve On-Demand Security

[Credential stuffing](https://auth0.com/resources/whitepapers/2022-state-of-secure-identity-report) accounts for 34% of overall login traffic and outpaces normal traffic in some countries (61%) in the U.S. and verticals (more than 80% in retail), according to Okta’s 2022 State of Secure Identity Report. **Attack protection with [Credential Guard](https://auth0.com/blog/auth0-credential-guard-detects-breached-passwords-faster-to-prevent-account-takeover/)** and **[Bot Detection](https://auth0.com/blog/auth0-bot-detection-reduces-bot-attacks-by-79/)** enables you to secure the data of your business customers, and help prevent the most common identity-based attacks. We take the burden of managing identity security off your internal teams, so they can focus on shipping new features for your product.

### Customize Authentication For Complex Use Cases

No two business customers are the same, and there will be frequent requests to customize your platform for complex use cases. **Extensibility**–custom code blocks and extensibility points that allow for secure customization at any point in the authentication pipeline–has long been an Auth0 differentiator and is now available through Auth0. And because we maintain the extensibility framework, you can meet unique authentication needs and confidently check off RFP requirements today, with adaptability for tomorrow.

### Become Enterprise Ready and Scale

Your customer identity platform should help you grow and land larger customers more often. With SaaS Apps, customer requirements around **SSO and MFA** are available out of the box. Coupled with cloud choice across AWS and Azure, regional infrastructure for data residency, and our 99.99% SLA, you can grow your business anywhere in the world, one login at a time–without needing to host, manage, or scale an identity solution yourself.

## What’s New for SaaS Apps?

New product innovations for SaaS Apps, announced at Oktane22, are now available for all Okta customers:

* **Okta Workforce Enterprise Connection:** Okta Workforce Enterprise Connection makes it easy for SaaS app builders to offer out-of-the-box integrations to Okta Workforce Identity Cloud, providing end-users with a seamless and trustworthy login experience. This enterprise connection is included on all Enterprise and B2B self-service plans for no additional charge and is now easier to discover and configure for SaaS Apps use cases.
* **Organizations Enhancements:** To support our customer's business growth, Organizations now support greater scalability with up to two million organizations per user (tenant) and two million members per organization. We have also made it easier to search for organizations within the Manage Dashboard, making it even easier to find and administer those millions of business customers in your multi-tenant application.

Ready to accelerate your business with identity? Learn more about Auth0 for SaaS Apps at [https://www.okta.com/customer-identity](https://www.okta.com/customer-identity/).

Auth0 for SaaS Apps Explained

New partnerships aim to bring secure customer identity to the platforms developers use every day in one click, or less

Almost a decade ago, _The New Kingmakers_ made reference to the rise of a developer class that would fundamentally reshape technology decision-making. Today, two-thirds of professional developers have a voice when their organizations are purchasing new technologies, according to [Stack Overflow](https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2022/#technology-most-loved-dreaded-and-wanted). Product-led growth is official “a thing,” and companies that make life easier for developers have been crowned with success again and again.

The acquisition of Auth0 accelerated Okta’s own journey with developers. Over 2.8 million unique developers look to [Auth0, now the Okta Customer Identity Cloud](https://www.okta.com/press-room/press-releases/okta-introduces-okta-customer-identity-cloud-to-help-businesses-grow-user/) each month for expertise on how to implement customer identity, across in-person events, the Auth0 Ambassador program, and digital channels like docs, technical blogs, and JWT.io.

Today, at [Oktane22](https://www.okta.com/oktane22/), we announced the next giant leap in our journey toward making identity easier for developers: New partnerships with three of the leading developer platforms: DigitalOcean, Netlify, and Vercel. These are like-minded platforms that put developers at the heart of their missions. Together, we intend to bring expert advice and easy integrations to where developers already spend their time–with the ultimate vision of providing secure customer identity in one click or less within each platform environment.

“Creating compelling experiences is hard enough without having to be an identity expert, too. And the stakes are too high to get it wrong,” said Shiven Ramji, Chief Product Officer, Customer Identity at Okta. “Okta Customer Identity Cloud powered by Auth0 can be called by your app and hosted in your cloud of choice, but we don’t want to stop there. This is the first step in a multi-year journey to fully integrate secure identity capabilities where developers are building the future. We are honored to have DigitalOcean, Netlify, and Vercel join us on this quest.”

## Abstracting Away Complexity

Developers are facing all kinds of application complexity and maintenance work that takes them away from innovation. The Covid-19 pandemic only amplified the need to be hyper-focused on shipping differentiated, user-centric products. Security has become a cat-and-mouse game as attackers shift their tactics and new privacy laws are established. Developers need to balance all of these priorities while dealing with resourcing and talent pressures.

Customer identity stands at the intersection of these forces: security, privacy, and user experience. Getting it right enables everyone to safely access any technology and developers to integrate customer identities across the stack. But according to a [Gartner](https://www.gartner.com/en/documents/4009255)® report, “The cost of maintaining a homegrown CIAM toolset has grown, compared with commercial offerings. There is a growing preference for buying versus building, which is enabling the business to refocus development resources.”

## Empowering Developers for a Safer Internet

Together, we believe Okta, DigitalOcean, Netlify, and Vercel can streamline the education, implementation, and activation of customer identity for developers across the globe. Today, we’re starting with improving education and awareness around the complexity of identity, followed by improving discoverability for our integrations along the developer journey, with the ultimate vision of one-click integrations.

Democratizing access to enterprise-grade customer identity for developers will have a massive impact on the security of end-consumers and empower developers to focus on innovation. As part of Okta Customer Identity Cloud, we can put adaptive multi-factor authentication (MFA), bot detection, passkeys, and more in the hands of developers with the literal flip of a switch. Meeting developers where they are is a key part of our strategy, and we couldn’t be more excited to welcome DigitalOcean, Netlify, and Vercel to our network.

“We’re very excited to be working with Okta to better equip developers and small businesses to add customer identity into their Apps built on DigitalOcean,” said Tyler Healy, Vice President of Security at [DigitalOcean](https://www.digitalocean.com/). “When it comes to developers and digital entrepreneurs, simplicity is vital. This partnership will only further DigitalOcean’s ability to simplify innovation on our platform and enable builders to spend more time creating software that changes the world.”

“Developers are moving to a decoupled, composable web architecture because they want more flexibility to use any tool or framework to build faster, better-performing web experiences. At the same time, they need a great developer experience in a simple workflow. That’s where Netlify plays a key role as the platform connecting all developer’s tools, including Auth0 by Okta, and APIs in one place to build and run web apps. Working with Okta, we look forward to making identity and authentication as easy and simple as possible for millions of developers,” said Matt Biilmann, CEO and co-founder [Netlify](https://www.netlify.com/)

“As a leading cloud platform for frontend developers, Vercel provides innovators with the speed and reliability they need to create at the moment of inspiration. Security and identity are at the core of building delightful digital experiences,” said Malte Ubl, CTO at [Vercel](https://vercel.com/). “By joining forces with Okta, we’re not only simplifying the role that identity plays on the web but also making a commitment to enhancing the speed and breadth of developer-friendly cybersecurity in an increasingly digital world.” 

## Neutrality to Build Your App, Your Way

Developers want the freedom and power to choose the best solutions for their digital ecosystem. Okta’s commitment to neutrality means not being restricted to a specific technology stack and having the ability to control and customize identity now and in the future. We are designing easy-to-integrate solutions that free developers to use any technology, regardless of platform, device, or infrastructure. We are 100% focused on identity, so developers can focus on innovation.

## Availability and Signup

Developers can learn more about Okta’s new developer platform partnerships and get started with Okta Customer Identity Cloud [on our Developer Center](https://developer.auth0.com/resources/get-started/cloud?utm_source=blog&utm_medium=website&utm_campaign=partnerships). We will release more information about the DigitalOcean, Netlify, and Vercel integrations as they become available.

If you’re a developer platform interested in joining our quest to make identity easier for developers, [please reach out to our tech partnerships team](https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfGzaE5a6-OSy1D1N8PMeSE8pXCfsr4UkzDqUpW-vUGq2rYHg/viewform).

## About Okta

Okta is the World’s Identity Company. As the leading independent Identity partner, we free everyone to safely use any technology—anywhere, on any device or app. The most trusted brands trust Okta to enable secure access, authentication, and automation. With flexibility and neutrality at the core of our Okta Workforce Identity and Customer Identity Clouds, business leaders and developers can focus on innovation and accelerate digital transformation thanks to customizable solutions and more than 7,000 pre-built integrations. We’re building a world where Identity belongs to you. Learn more at [okta.com](http://okta.com/).

Okta Partners with DigitalOcean, Netlify, and Vercel to Simplify Identity for Developer

liz-rivera

At Auth0 I'm responsible for clearly and concisely communicating the value of our CIAM platform. What a great role to be in as digital technologies and applications increasingly become ingrained in our everyday lives. I also oversee the Healthcare vertical, which I'm super passionate about, as digital advances are already recreating the way we receive care.

Senior Product Marketing Manager, CIAM

Liz Rivera

Auth0 has a new CDP partner in our Marketplace

Digital interactions are increasingly dynamic as brands accelerate digitization - adding more digital channels and services to cater to consumer demands for convenient and seamless access to services from anywhere. This reality has fueled an explosion of data being collected across a wide array of channels and customer data repositories, which not only makes it difficult for marketing teams to get a single view of customers but also makes it challenging to trust the accuracy of the data.  

When customers cannot be accurately identified, this skews analytics and impedes true understanding of customers, their preferences, and behaviors across all digital properties, which is critical to driving adoption and customer lifetime value. This has sparked a growing need to bridge the gap between marketing and Customer Identity & Access Management (CIAM), combining identity and marketing to create a holistic picture of user behaviors. 

### Breaking down silos with customer data platforms (CDPs)

Brands collect customer data across various channels (web, mobile) and systems (martech, eCommerce, customer care) with the goal of extracting insights to enrich the experience. Unfortunately, these customer data sources act as islands creating siloed views of customers, impacting the ability to effectively analyze and personalize the experience.  

Centralizing customer data is the first step toward fueling the understanding of customers. Today, organizations are turning to customer data platforms (CDPs), which serve as master customer data stores. CDPs aggregate customer data across multiple channels and repositories, unifying previously disparate data silos to create unified customer profiles — the customer 360. 

CDPs enable marketing teams to optimize the timing and targeting of offers, communication, and engagement activities by allowing the analysis of behavior across the customer journey. However, without a proper identity verification source, the legitimacy of the data comes into question.  

Because CDPs aggregate previously collected data, it is difficult to know how valid the data is. The data may have been collected in a channel without gaining proper consent, the customer's identity may still be unknown (e.g., anonymous profiles), and/or the contact details have become outdated or were never validated.

### Source of truth: Customer Identity and Access Management

Traditionally, CIAM has been a form of front-line security. However, it has reciprocal value across an organization as it is the front door to your digital services and products. CIAM is how customers adopt and engage with your digital products and services and gives you the means to accurately identify, collect, analyze and secure their data. 

CIAM provides a unified interface for customers to sign up and sign in to your products and services - it is often the first touchpoint at which customers become identifiable. The data that is collected during these events is not only verified through authentication events but can span deterministic data, customer data brought in from other identity providers (e.g., social or enterprise repositories), the devices being used to access services, and the location services are being consumed from.   

This valuable source of truth can be used to connect customer identity across all digital services, including their preferences, usage patterns, and consent. 

### CIAM and CDPs: Powering the marketing funnel

Investment in a CDP is made to better understand customers in order to drive conversions, ROI, customer retention, engagement, loyalty, funnel optimization, and customer experience. Enriching the customer profile with essential identity data across all applications can further accelerate the value of a CDP investment.

Through bi-directional synchronization with CDPs and other martech systems, CIAM data can be used to:

* **Connect anonymous profiles to known customers **by providing verified identity data at signups, such as IP address and device identifiers. The CDP can ingest this data and correlate it to a previously unknown profile. With third-party cookies going away and mobile devices limiting app tracking, this capability is essential for marketers looking to understand their customers’ behaviors across their pre and post-account creation activity and engagement regardless of application or channel. 
* **Enrich user profiles with accurate, customer-provided data.** CIAM verifies users’ identities during registration and login, using identifiers such as email or mobile number. If the CDP detects a change/update, it will update the user profile with the new data.   
* **Power analytics with actionable identity data spanning how, where, and when users are signing up and signing into applications**. CIAM plays a central role in the conversion funnel. The acquisition is tied to signup, and retention is tied to the login experience associated with your digital services. Not having a unified view of these processes and a way to analyze and take action on this data can lead to friction, which creates frustration and leads to lost conversions. By providing a CDP with this data, which in turn is shared with martech and analytics systems, markets can develop a deeper understanding of customers’ behaviors and transaction patterns to identify threats, points of friction, and opportunities for segmentation. 

### Auth0: Unifying and powering existing tech stacks with identity data

At Auth0, we position ourselves as an essential component in the end-to-end digital relationship. Auth0 serves as a foundation to unify an organization's existing tech stack as it integrates and enables a broad ecosystem of technologies and applications spanning applications, APIs, martech, content management, fraud, privacy, sales, and customer care systems.  

Essentially Auth0 acts as a single source of truth for identity data spanning: 

1. Identifiers a user is providing when creating an account
2. Locales, devices, and IPs that the user is logging in from
3. Number of times a user is logging in
4. Applications the user is logging in to
5. Risk profile of the login that the user completed
6. Verified email or the phone number used during the authentication challenge

By sharing this data with downstream systems, Auth0 can boost business outcomes across an entire organization, for instance: 

* Marketing teams to power analytics to better gauge conversion and derive benefits from clean, trusted data.
* Customer support agents to leverage login activity to better service customers.
* Security teams to utilize transactional data to diagnose a potential account breach.  

We are constantly adding partner integrations to our Marketplace to allow our customers to power their tech stack easily and quickly with identity data. [Tealium](https://tealium.com/) recently launched a new CDP integration on the Auth0 Marketplace - [Tealium User Login](https://marketplace.auth0.com/integrations/tealium).  This integration enables marketing and digital teams to leverage Auth0 identity data to connect anonymous profiles to known users and enrich user profiles with accurate and up-to-date data.  

As we continue to grow our CDP footprint, our partner integrations will have an emphasis on helping consumer businesses better understand customers and drive conversion. These pre-built integrations, like Tealium, allow customers to configure and deploy a CDP without employing developers to build a custom solution. 

Be on the lookout as our partners continue to build out new CDP integrations in the [Auth0 Marketplace](http://marketplace.auth0.com/).

Why You Should Integrate Customer Identity and Your Customer Data Platform (CDP)

Todd McKinnon

Todd McKinnon is the CEO and co-founder of Okta, the leading provider of enterprise identity, which he co-founded in 2009 with Frederic Kerrest. Under Todd’s leadership, Okta has transformed the way millions of people access technology and put identity at the forefront of security.

Todd’s experience as a leader and technology visionary spans more than 25 years, with deep roots in enterprise software and cloud transformation. Prior to Okta, he led engineering at Salesforce.com, where he grew the team from 15 people to more than 250, and the service from two million daily transactions to more than 150 million. Todd started his career at PeopleSoft, where he held a number of engineering and leadership roles throughout his 8-year tenure.

Todd earned his bachelor’s degree in management and information systems from Brigham Young University and his master’s in computer science from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. A Bay Area native, Todd is an advisor to Family House and an advocate for equality and inclusion. He is a husband and father, an exercise addict, and a mountain bike enthusiast.

Okta CEO and co-founder

eugenio-pace-new-avatar

Pace co-founded Auth0 in early 2013 with CTO and “brother-in-arms” Matias Woloski while living 7,000 miles apart from each other. Since then, Pace has played an instrumental role in growing Auth0 into a leading identity management company that is loved by developers and trusted by global enterprises. He loves traveling and has visited more than 35 countries for business and pleasure. He currently lives in Redmond, Washington with his wife, two sons, and their labrador retriever. In his spare time, he enjoys the outdoors, rowing, riding bikes, spending time with his family, restoring his 1970 Karmann Ghia, writing his blog, and reading history and philosophy.

CEO and Co-Founder

Eugenio Pace

Today marks one year since Okta and Auth0 officially teamed up to lead together in the customer identity and access management (CIAM) market.

Today marks one year since Okta and Auth0 officially [teamed up](https://www.okta.com/blog/2021/04/its-official-okta-joins-forces-with-auth0/) to lead together in the customer identity and access management (CIAM) market. While we’re still early in our journey, we couldn’t be happier with the momentum we’ve generated as a combined company over the last year. Here’s what we’ve learned so far and a look ahead at what’s next.

### Customers need Okta and Auth0

When we first announced the acquisition, the most-asked question we heard was, “which CIAM product are you keeping?” As we answered at [Showcase21](https://www.okta.com/resources/showcase21-content/), we’re keeping both — we partner with many customers who have unique requirements, and two solutions are better than one to meet these diverse customer needs. It’s one assertion coming from us, but industry analysts have likewise acknowledged Okta and Auth0 as leaders.

Gartner® named Okta and Okta (Auth0) as Leaders in their [2021 Magic Quadrant™ for Access Management](https://www.okta.com/resources/access-management-leader-gartner-magic-quadrant-2021/thankyou/). Together, we address a broad set of identity use cases for our customers in pursuit of the incredible $30B CIAM market opportunity.

Okta and Auth0 customers like [Larimer County, CO](https://www.okta.com/customers/larimer-county/) recognize our joint value. Larimer County partners with both Okta and Auth0 to bolster security and increase flexibility for its internal IT department and county residents. Our company values are each firmly rooted in customer success, and together, our identity platforms are robust and flexible enough to support the most innovative developers and the world’s largest organizations.


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### Our shared values and vision set the integration up for success

The success we’ve experienced together in the last year is due largely to our shared values — customer success being just one of them. Our joint commitment to innovation, transparency, integrity, and empowerment has allowed us to collaborate effectively and remain focused on our common vision to enable everyone to safely use any technology and establish identity as a primary cloud. On this strong, shared foundation, we’ve made considerable progress in bringing our teams, products, programs, and systems together.

Our employee ranks now exceed 5,000, and together, we support more than 15,000 customers. Although Auth0 remains a product unit within Okta, we’ve combined several functions to accelerate our ability to collaborate and innovate. Our integrated go-to-market team can support organizations across the globe with both customer and workforce identity.

We’ve united our cultures and rituals, coming together for our first joint [company kickoff event](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/activity-6900902245152509952-rv7p?utm_source=linkedin_share&utm_medium=member_desktop_web) in February and our first joint [Developer Day](https://www.okta.com/developer-day-2021-content) in August. We’ve stayed true to our weekly Company All Hands meetings and enjoy hosting a much larger and more global audience. We’ve combined and opened up our many offices so Okta and Auth0 employees can collaborate and build relationships worldwide. We are truly better together, and we continue to experience momentum across the Okta and Auth0 cultures and businesses.

Acquisitions require a ton of work — especially those taking place in fully remote environments! This reality has never been lost on us, and it’s why we’ve been thoughtful and intentional in leading the integration with our shared values and vision. We’ve made a ton of progress so far, but what excites us most is the future.

### Our path forward is bright

We are on a multi-year journey to build the most comprehensive, neutral identity platform in the market, become the standard for customer and workforce identity, and empower everyone to safely use any technology. We have already made great strides within this massive market – $80B TAM – but opportunity abounds ahead. The past year has reinforced one indisputable fact: identity is critical technology. As always, we’re squarely focused on empowering customers with identity, and we know we can go farther and faster together.

Thank you to employees, customers, and partners for making this an incredible first year. We’re still early in our joint journey, and we can’t wait to see what the next year brings.

Source: “Magic Quadrant for Access Management” by Henrique Texeira, [Abhyuday Data](https://www.gartner.com/analyst/85957) and Michael Kelley, Gartner, November 2021.

_Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner’s research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose._

_Gartner and Magic Quadrant are registered trademarks of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and internationally and is used herein with permission. All rights reserved._

Raising the Bar on Identity: One Year of Okta + Auth0

Identity leaders combine developer and enterprise expertise, offering customers more flexibility

Okta, Inc, today (May 3, 2021) announced the successful completion of its acquisition of Auth0. Together, Okta and Auth0 address a broad set of digital identity use cases, providing secure access and enabling everyone to safely use any technology. 

Auth0 will operate as an independent business unit within Okta, led by Auth0 Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder Eugenio Pace, reporting directly to Todd McKinnon, Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder of Okta. Both Okta’s and Auth0’s platforms will be supported, invested in, and integrated over time — accelerating innovation and making the Okta Identity Cloud even more compelling for the full spectrum of customers and users. 

“Identity is one of the most strategic investments an organization will make today. A single, unified identity platform has the power to transform an organization by providing seamless and secure access for both customers and employees,” said McKinnon. “Okta and Auth0 have always shared a vision for the identity market. We’re also both cloud-first, customer-first companies. By joining forces, we’ll give our customers more choice and flexibility, driving tremendous value and enabling them to accelerate innovation. Together, we will shape the future of identity on the internet, empowering developers to build with identity at the foundation.”

"As Okta and Auth0 join forces today, bringing together two exceptional companies, I'm more confident than ever that we will deliver on our shared vision to secure access for everyone," said Pace. "Auth0's focus has always been on enabling product builders to innovate, and now as one company with a shared vision and combined resources, that innovation will only increase."

Okta’s and Auth0’s comprehensive, complementary, and flexible identity platforms solve every identity use case, regardless of the audience or user. Okta pioneered cloud-based identity, offering enterprise-grade reliability and world-class security while prioritizing customer success for organizations of all sizes. Auth0 was built by developers for developers. Application builders around the world are loyal to Auth0 for its extensibility, ease of use, scope of documentation, and developer-friendly experience. With combined expertise across developer communities and the enterprise, Okta and Auth0 will provide enhanced depth and breadth of identity solutions and will be even better suited to integrate quickly into the modern tech stack of today’s developers. 

“At Kiva, we’re on a mission to expand financial access to help underserved communities around the world thrive. Identity plays an essential role in making that happen," said Ken Leung, EVP of Engineering, Kiva. "Today, we leverage Auth0 to provide secure authentication to Kiva's partners and lenders, and Okta for workforce identity, giving our team access to the critical technologies they need to best serve the millions of global entrepreneurs in our network.  We trust both Okta and Auth0 to connect our people and technology, and are excited to see how they evolve and innovate together."

“Credence goes to those who can help us identify one another in a digital world,” said Jay Bretzmann, Program Director for Cybersecurity Products, IDC.  “Okta and Auth0 provide the cloud-ready, developer-friendly tools to help in the fight. They're building the platforms and technology we’ll need to take the next steps. Simple, elegant, and customer-centric." 

## Cautionary Language Concerning Forward-Looking Statements

This blog contains forward-looking statements relating to expectations, plans, and prospects including statements relating to the anticipated benefits that will be derived from this transaction, the expected acceleration of Okta’s growth as a result of this transaction, the impact to the Okta Identity Cloud, expected synergies resulting from the transaction and expansion of Okta’s customer base. These forward-looking statements are based upon the current expectations and beliefs of Okta’s management as of the date of this release and are subject to certain risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those described in the forward-looking statements including, without limitation, the risk of adverse and unpredictable macro-economic conditions, the failure to achieve expected synergies and efficiencies of operations between Okta and Auth0, the ability of Okta and Auth0 to successfully integrate their respective businesses, the failure to timely develop and achieve market acceptance of the combined business, the loss of any Auth0 customers, the ability to coordinate strategy and resources between Okta and Auth0, and the ability of Okta and Auth0 to retain and motivate key employees of Auth0. Additional factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from these forward-looking statements are detailed from time to time in the reports Okta files with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including in Okta’s Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended January 31, 2021. All forward-looking statements in this press release are based on information available to Okta as of the date hereof, and Okta disclaims any obligation to update these forward-looking statements.

<include src="asides/AboutAuth0" />

Okta Completes Acquisition of Auth0

1Vitor de Sousa_Auth0

As Regional Vice President, Vitor de Sousa supports Okta and Auth0's German customers in achieving their Identity and Access Management goals. With more than 20 years of experience in the consumer goods industry, as well as in technology and software sales, he develops strategically smart and creative solutions for the interplay of identity authentication, customer experience, and data protection.

Regional Vice President, Enterprise Sales - Germany

Vitor de Sousa

Partnering with a provider to centralize identity lets you maintain control over your data without compromising user experience

Consumers expect the web apps and services they use to be intuitive while also requiring secure and private transactions and a low-friction experience. A good example of this is the increasing demand for biometrics, the use of a person’s physical attributes like a fingerprint or face scan to prove identity and control access. Consumers have become accustomed to the security and convenience that using a fingerprint to unlock their smartphone offers, so using the same technology to secure your web app is an intuitive way to help secure their account data.

[Auth0’s recent global survey](https://info.auth0.com/erwartungen-und-realitat.html), including more than 2,000 consumers and 200 IT/marketing decision-makers in Germany, found that 31% of German consumers are more likely to sign up for a service if it offers biometric authentication. Yet only 17% of German businesses offer this feature. SO biometric authentication is one way for businesses in the DACH region to better align themselves with their customers’ expectations for security without compromising their customer experience (CX). 

Partnering with an [Identity as a Service (IDaaS)](https://auth0.com/blog/what-is-idaas/) provider who understands how to combine an intuitive user interface with strong security measures like that offered by biometrics can bring additional benefits to your organization. For example: freeing your in-house development talent to focus on your core product, helping you meet regional data privacy regulations, and maintaining active control over your user data.

## Let Your Internal Talent Focus on Your Core Product

Germany is not only the largest economy in the EU; it is also home to the largest software developer talent pool in the region. [As of 2019](https://www.cbi.eu/market-information/outsourcing-itobpo/software-development-services/market-potential), there were more than 900,000 developers in the country, with a majority describing themselves as [Full-Stack front-end developers](https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2021). To ensure your in-house dev teams can focus on those strengths, don’t distract them with an identity project. At Auth0, identity is our core product. Our teams built, maintained, and enhanced a Customer Identity and Access Management (CIAM) platform that incorporates industry security standards, an expert understanding of regional data privacy regulations, and a highly customizable set of integrations to bring you exactly the right mix of security, privacy, and CX.

Our identity specialists bring their expertise and knowledge to secure your authentication and authorization processes while also bringing your customers the tailored, low-friction CX they expect. That allows us to help you build a solution that will be capable of incorporating your needs in the present — while remaining extensible enough to scale with your plans for the future. 

The centralized identity solution you build will unify authentication for your platforms, services, and web apps. This single source of truth (SSoT) for your customer identity data is easier to secure than disparate, siloed data stores for each system. It also limits your attack surface by eliminating multiple access points and login boxes. 

By partnering with Auth0, you get a centralized identity platform that’s ready to be customized by your developers to meet your precise requirements. And our extensibility allows that platform to be readily extended to cover all of your existing properties, whether they’re modern cloud-based apps or legacy on-prem systems.

## Understanding Data Privacy Regulations in The DACH Region

EU Member States are allowed to enact national privacy rules to supplement, specify, and modify the GDPR rules as applied to their citizens. It’s important that companies familiarise themselves with these rules that often govern specific situations.

This document is not intended to act as legal advice. Please consult your legal counsel to ensure you are in compliance with all applicable data privacy laws and regulations.

The right to privacy is well established and respected in the DACH region, where such legislation existed long before the GDPR. Today there are additional rules such as the new German Privacy Act (BDSG-new) along with industry-specific regulations for, e.g., telecommunications, banking, and energy. In Austria, too, we see local regulations like the [Federal Act on the Protection of Individuals With Regard to the Processing of Personal Data (DSG)](https://www.dataguidance.com/notes/austria-data-protection-overview), all designed to put the privacy rights of citizens first.

[Switzerland](https://www.dataguidance.com/notes/switzerland-data-protection-overview) has a slightly different take on data protection regulations as well. In addition to GDPR, there are two additional laws that impact data collection and processing there. The first is Article 13 of the Swiss Constitution, which protects Swiss citizens’ rights to privacy in personal and family life, as well as within the home. Meanwhile, the Federal Act on Data Protection (FADP) solidified the language governing how those rights are protected in regards to digital data. Unless you have a team of lawyers and governance specialists for your developers to work with, making sure you’re in full compliance with all of these regulations will soak up a lot of internal resources. Partnering with an IDaaS provider can alleviate these additional strains by taking on the task of helping to assure compliance.

The DACH data privacy landscape can seem complex, and the responsibility for coding privacy into your applications often falls to the people building them. By partnering with Auth0, your developers can help you protect your customer’s personal information without becoming privacy experts themselves. Auth0’s key privacy-enabling features include:

* Easy access to user profiles to enable removal requests
* To export a user’s data in JSON format for data portability
* To enable Log Streaming for continuous security monitoring
* The knowledge that your data is stored locally at an AWS facility in Frankfurt

## Great Customer Experience Includes Choices for Data Location

Part of ensuring your customers get the experience they expect is maintaining control over the data they share when they create an account. Consolidating that data into an SSoT simplifies continuously monitoring its security and detecting threats and other anomalies. Having choices with respect to the location where your data is stored is another asset of partnering with an IDaaS provider like Auth0.

### Data security certification

Auth0 brings knowledge of [regional privacy regulations](https://auth0.com/docs/compliance/gdpr), along with internationally recognized certifications from organizations such as the International Standards Organization (ISO) [27001](https://www.iso.org/obp/ui/#iso:std:iso-iec:27001:ed-2:v1:en) and [27018](https://www.iso.org/standard/61498.html), along with a[ SOC 2 Type II audit](https://auth0.com/blog/auth0-achieves-soc-2-certification/). These are third-party verified certifications, meaning a specialized auditing body has signed off on the security of our processes, infrastructure, [platform](https://assets.ctfassets.net/kbkgmx9upatd/2KxmM5BICQ4GKgeIwA0sKu/d4f59bd579803593edcd571f1aa92ef0/Auth0_Platform_Operations.pdf), policies, and continuous monitoring framework. Auth0 complies with [additional regulations](https://auth0.com/de/security) as well, BaFin, EBA, and HIPAA for example. 

### Customizable user interfaces

[Auth0 Marketplace](https://marketplace.auth0.com/) offers integrations with major line-of-business software, while our [Actions](https://auth0.com/actions) capability allows your developers to work with these integrations with everything from drag and drop to a full Javascript editor. This ease of integration and customization means you can create your login box once and use it across properties.

### All your user data in one place

Being cloud-native gives Auth0 the flexibility to offer multiple data storage options. Access is a key piece of data residency. For organizations in the DACH region, we offer [private cloud deployment options on Microsoft Azure](https://auth0.com/blog/auth0-on-microsoft-azure-as-a-private-cloud-deployment-option/) or AWS infrastructure, as well as public cloud options using an AWS facility in multiple regions such as Frankfurt to help our customers achieve compliance. 

### Iterative deployment to ensure buy-in across the organization

Deploying a new identity and access management system can be a lengthy and complex process from a business perspective. Partnering with Auth0 and taking advantage of our identity experts allows for an iterative deployment and a smooth migration that does not jeopardize the user experience by offering frictionless user migrations without password resets. That way, each department or product team can witness a successful roll-out before giving their buy-in without straining your in-house talent. Cross-departmental collaboration is key to any software project, particularly when that software controls data access, and having a successful proof-of-concept (POC) in hand can help secure buy-in as you move forward.

Work with an identity partner that understands your need for a great digital experience without compromising the security and privacy of your customer data. [Reach out to our identity experts](https://auth0.com/contact-us) when you’re ready to continue the conversation or to find out how to start working with Auth0 today.


Centralize Identity For Security and Customer Experience

diegopoza

System Engineer, geek, foodie, technology lover, speaker.

Sr Manager, Developer Advocacy

Diego Poza

Enable agile scalability with customer identity and access management (CIAM)

In the last few years, identity has become a familiar concept to business decision-makers seeking to fortify their security, unlock efficiency gains, and outpace competitors.

[Customer identity and access management (CIAM)](https://auth0.com/blog/what-is-ciam/) is a set of solutions built to help organizations balance convenience, privacy, and security for every type of user who needs access to their platform. At Auth0, we’ve heard from our customers that investing in third-party CIAM solutions can benefit the entire organization, especially by:

* Providing a seamless, secure customer experience
* Protecting against expensive data breaches
* Guiding compliance with data privacy laws
* Gathering customer data into a single source of truth
* Increasing the success of digital transformation projects

Another major advantage to CIAM is that centralizing customer identity helps you build more scalable solutions — and scalability is both a benefit of and a requirement for the advantages listed above. Simply put, CIAM gives you the tools you need to scale identity quickly.

![The Business Value of Scalability](https://images.ctfassets.net/23aumh6u8s0i/BXZTiwu81LfqqP7O3yEmj/a66340c22f87e48739da621e7e46cdf6/02_B_power.jpg)

## The Business Value of Scalability

Scalability refers to a system’s ability to increase its capacity and functionality based on the evolving demands of its users. Your industry may be volatile, but scalable software allows your platform to remain stable in the face of infrastructure changes, updates, overhauls, and resource reductions/additions.

Laggard legacy systems are inflexible and resource-intensive to maintain, which for many companies is reason enough to prioritize digital transformation. Critically, legacy systems also fall short of modern scaling demand and user expectations. 

In contrast, building scalable solutions helps your organization increase predictability; trim maintenance and upgrade costs; and become more agile, so you can meet customers’ dynamic demands.

> Scalable software also shortens time-to-value. Your teams will bring products to market more quickly and deliver more value to your customers if they don’t have to worry about scaling your identity solution.

### Increase reliability

Scalable software systems increase reliability, so you can avoid outages and maintain continuous uptime. The ability to provide a smooth, consistent customer experience even in the face of demand spikes is a key competitive advantage enabled by CIAM. When circumstances like a major news broadcast or a big sporting event cause your platform to be flooded with requests, you don’t want to experience lags or outages. The bottom line: Lack of scalability leads to reduced reliability, which can drive users to another service. 

### Protect against data breaches

A scalable identity solution helps protect customer data from breaches and exposures that can occur as your organization scales. [A 2020 IBM-Ponemon study](https://www.ibm.com/security/data-breach) found that data breaches cost an average of $3.86 million per incident globally, with the number rising to $8.64 million on average in the United States. Breach-related costs include actual fines and reputation erosion that can lead to customers shifting to competing brands.

<include src="TweetQuote" quoteText="With CIAM, you can offer your customers the convenience of rapid authentication without introducing security vulnerabilities that make you more susceptible to a data breach." />

### Be ready for mergers and acquisitions

If you want to enhance your appeal as an acquisition target, or if you’re evaluating other companies to acquire, a solid CIAM strategy is critical. [Implementing CIAM before a merger or acquisition](https://auth0.com/blog/why-iam-is-essential-to-m-a-and-replatforming/) can prevent you from spending months integrating applications struggling to reconcile a high volume of user data, exposing security vulnerabilities, or introducing friction that drives customers away. 

CIAM goes a long way toward minimizing the disruption of M&A activity: before, during, and after integration. Managing post-M&A integration in-house is a difficult, time-consuming job that keeps your developers from devoting their full attention to your core solutions — which is more important than ever when you need to mitigate churn. [As Auth0 customer Cimpress discovered](https://auth0.com/case-studies/cimpress/), the right approach to customer identity management allows you to connect companies with divergent systems to your platform quickly and easily.

## How Does CIAM Enable Scalable Identity?

Identity touches every function of your business. Typically, organizations have to manage identity for different types of users: customers, employees, and enterprise partners. Each user type has different requirements for your platform depending on how they use it. CIAM not only helps you provide the right balance of convenience, privacy, and security to each type of user; it also gives you superior insight and a single source of truth to drive better strategic decision-making. 

### Give customers the frictionless experience they want

When a seamless customer experience is your first priority, scalability is an absolute requirement. And with customer-facing applications, ease of experience is everything. If your CIAM solution doesn’t scale, your users will abandon you for another service.

As a customer, you’ve probably experienced this impatience. If you’re trying to order dinner and your first-choice food delivery platform is overwhelmed and experiencing lags, you’ll switch over to another platform — and that platform might be your first choice from then on.

CIAM also allows companies to unify their login experience across apps, creating a consistent experience that benefits both user and brand. UK-based conditioning company [Gymshark](https://auth0.com/case-studies/gymshark/), an Auth0 customer, is a great example of how CIAM enables an exceptionally smooth, secure login experience across platforms. Gymshark needed a universal login solution that could authenticate customers across 15 different online stores and mobile apps. With Auth0, they’re able to manage access for 250,000 monthly users while securing their platform against [credential stuffing attacks](https://auth0.com/resources/whitepapers/credential-stuffing-attacks) and other threats to the login box.

### Cultivate customer trust with strong security

Your customers trust you to keep their personal information private; to be transparent and responsible with how you collect, store, and use their data; and to comply with regulations designed to protect customer privacy. CIAM enables you to uphold this trust as your solution scales, and your integration ecosystem expands.

Data privacy laws like [GDPR](https://auth0.com/docs/compliance/gdpr), [CPRA](https://auth0.com/blog/cpra-passed-what-s-changing-in-ccpa-2-0/), and [APPI](https://auth0.com/resources/whitepapers/amended-appi) require companies to understand how third-party providers manage the collection, use, and storage of data in their systems. CIAM solutions help guide compliance with these regulations, so you don’t lose sleep over non-compliance fines or expensive data breaches.

Implementing CIAM shows customers that you are literally invested in ensuring their privacy and security. Similarly, essential [certifications](https://auth0.com/docs/compliance) like HIPAA, CSA STAR, and ISO 27001/27018 also signify to customers and regulators that you’re not just claiming a strong security posture; you’re undergoing regular, rigorous security checks by an expert third party.

### Accelerate time-to-market and solve for future problems

Implementing CIAM lets your developers focus on supporting your core solutions instead of also having to manage identity in-house. As a result, you’ll bring products to market faster and deliver more value to your customers.

At Auth0, we recommend that companies make decisions around CIAM based not on where their business _is_, but on where they want it to be. You need identity management capable of scaling to meet future business needs, not just the pain points you encounter today. Where do you want your business to be in five years? How will that drive your scalability needs? Think strategically about your desired future state. If you get overly focused on the pain points you’re encountering right now; you may be inviting incompatibility and tech debt into your business infrastructure.

![Manage Identity Complexity with CIAM](https://images.ctfassets.net/23aumh6u8s0i/5jPq4nBdhF6cZtBAJYb2xM/2cafa607686a3a828b43b9d3161cdd8d/02_C_power.jpg)

## Manage Identity Complexity with CIAM

Since identity touches every aspect of your business, the functionality and scalability of your identity solution will tend to match the functionality and scalability of your organization as a whole. With CIAM, you can deliver the secure, frictionless experience your customers expect as you scale and integrate your ecosystem. That’s why many of our customers have opted to manage the complexity of identity with CIAM.

To learn more about how CIAM can help you reach your milestones, [get in touch](https://auth0.com/contact-us) with the experts at Auth0.

<include src="asides/AboutAuth0" />

How to Scale Quickly with Identity

auziros:jeana-tahnk

Jeana has been in the tech industry for 15+ years, both as a communications professional and writer. As Director of Global Communications at Auth0, she works with her internal team and external agencies to amplify the company's visibility worldwide and establish its leadership in the identity industry. When she is not working, she can most likely be found on a field watching one of her three kids playing sports, or cleaning up after her one-year-old retriever who chews everything.

Senior Director, Global Communications

Jeana Tahnk

Enhanced identity management for builders and providers of B2B SaaS applications enables faster implementation and best-in-class security, branding, and administration

**BELLEVUE, Wash. – April 26, 2021 –** The [Auth0](https://auth0.com/) Identity Platform, a product unit within Okta, today announced the launch of [Organizations](https://auth0.com/organizations), a purpose-built feature enabling providers of B2B SaaS applications to seamlessly manage their business customers—a use case Auth0 defines as Business Customer Identity. Organizations is Auth0’s enhanced way for enterprise app teams to manage customers and partners in any multi-tenant, B2B, or SaaS application. With Organizations, B2B implementations are less complex, enabling faster speed-to-market and a better overall experience for business customers and partners. 

Business Customer Identity remains largely unaddressed by today’s Workforce Identity and Customer Identity Access Management (CIAM) solutions, forcing those who build and deliver B2B SaaS applications to cobble together features to address their unique use case. This requires significant customized configuration leading to high ongoing maintenance and configuration costs, slower time to market, and more difficult use case expansion and new app development.

![alt_text](https://images.ctfassets.net/23aumh6u8s0i/5AGLt3QorElIYSuC43J2TE/c3db1cfffa3649353fab74e01dcdd511/approved-asset-three.jpg)

Business apps are not just used by individuals but by teams and entire companies, all of which need easy and secure onboarding, flexible membership provisioning, access control, and SSO setup. Convenience for B2B users is also increasingly in demand, prompting enterprises to provide similar seamless experiences to business partners as they do for consumers. Auth0 Organizations solves all of these issues and more, offering customizable identity management of any business customer or partner.   

Key benefits of Auth0 Organizations include: 

* **Simple Business Customer Onboarding:** Auth0’s APIs and SDKs can easily model entire business organizations, and rapidly-implemented admin dashboards manage SSO, Role-Based Access Control, and flexible user management workflows.
* **Custom-Branded Federations:** The ability to customize the login experience with branded login and registration flows ensures that business customers feel at home. 
* **Faster, Easier Deployment:** Less complex implementations shorten time to market, and integrations are accelerated as new products are built or acquired. 
* **Identity Engineering & Maintenance Costs Reduction:** Engineering resources can shift to work on core product innovation instead of focusing on complex identity issues.

“We were initially looking for a platform solely to handle SSO for our enterprise customers. Organizations is a great fit and offers enough flexibility to replace authentication for our 300+ non-enterprise customers, too,” said Steven Easton, Lead Engineer at Amiqus. “We’ve been really impressed with how powerful Auth0 is and yet have barely scratched the surface. We are excited to roll out Organizations as an improvement to our business customers’ experience and value how easy Auth0 makes it to do so.”

“We see Business Customer Identity as a standalone use case, one that our customers have increasingly been confronted with and had trouble fully addressing—until now,” said Shiv Ramji, Chief Product Officer at Auth0. “B2B identity management represents a sizable portion of our business and is consistently growing, demonstrating the need that Business Customer Identity addresses. We are thrilled to launch Auth0 Organizations as our next-generation offering for easy onboarding, authentication, and administration of business customers.”

More information can be found at [Auth0 Organizations](https://auth0.com/organizations).

<include src="asides/AboutAuth0" />

### Media Contacts
Global Communications<br />
Auth0 <br />
[press@auth0.com](mailto:press@auth0.com)<br />

Matter for Auth0<br />
[auth0@matternow.com](mailto:auth0@matternow.com)<br />

Auth0 Launches Organizations, Transforming the Way Enterprises Manage Business Customer Identity

Global identity management provider recognized for commitment to government, education, and nonprofit customer success

**BELLEVUE, Wash. – April 14, 2021 –** The [Auth0](https://auth0.com/) Identity Platform, a product unit within Okta, today announced that it has joined the [Amazon Web Services (AWS) Public Sector Partner (PSP) Program](https://aws.amazon.com/partners/public-sector/). The AWS PSP Program recognizes AWS Partner Network (APN) Partners with solutions and experience in delivering government, education, and nonprofit customer missions around the world.

Auth0 and AWS are teaming up to help serve public sector customers in solving their unique security, privacy, and user experience challenges to meet mandates, reduce costs, drive efficiencies, and accelerate innovation. As an AWS Public Sector Partner, Auth0 now offers its extensible authentication and authorization solutions to the public sector community on the AWS Marketplace. To be selected for the program, Auth0 had to meet pre-defined criteria, including deep expertise and commitment to delivering government, education, and nonprofit services on a global basis. 

“We are honored to join the AWS PSP Program—this recognition reflects Auth0’s commitment to helping the global public sector community,” said Bill Lapcevic, VP of Business Development at Auth0. “As a Public Sector Partner, we are enabling public sector customers to accelerate their business growth on AWS, and are in a unique position to help these customers achieve their cloud security goals as they scale.”

In addition, Auth0 announced the appointment of Dean Scontras, Senior Director of Public Sector Sales, to lead the company’s federal, state, and local business and sales strategy.

“For the public sector, in particular, the onset of COVID-19 has accelerated the transition to digital citizen services, and heightened the need for organizations across all industries to secure their valued assets and data more firmly,” said Scontras. “I’m honored to join the Auth0 team and aid the company’s continued efforts in helping government agencies at the local, state, and federal level as they move towards digital citizen services and the essential role identity will play in that move.” 

Auth0 is an AWS Advanced Technology Partner that is participating in [AWS Public Sector Summit Online](https://aws.amazon.com/events/summits/online/public-sector/?did=ep_card&trk=ep_card), taking place April 15, 2021. To learn more, visit: [https://info.auth0.com/auth0-at-aws-publicsectorsummit-2021.html](https://info.auth0.com/auth0-at-aws-publicsectorsummit-2021.html)

Auth0 achieved the [AWS Security Competency](https://auth0.com/blog/auth0-achieves-aws-security-competency/) status in 2020 and was one of the first AWS Partners to give AWS customers seamless access to [professional services in AWS Marketplace](https://auth0.com/blog/auth0-supports-the-launch-of-professional-services-in-aws-marketplace/). For more information, visit [Auth0’s AWS Partner page](https://partners.amazonaws.com/partners/001E000000YKGRTIA5/Auth0). 

<include src="asides/AboutAuth0" />

### Media Contacts
Global Communications<br />
Auth0 <br />
[press@auth0.com](mailto:press@auth0.com)<br />

Matter for Auth0<br />
[auth0@matternow.com](mailto:auth0@matternow.com)<br />

Auth0 Joins the Amazon Web Services Public Sector Partner Program

Why the 'solved problem' of customer identity access management continues to be unsolved



You see something you want on the internet, provided you have the funds, you click, and you buy. From the business side, you receive the data from the click and provide the goods or the service.

Whether you understand the underlying technology or are not, this can seem like a problem that's been solved for a long time, especially when you've had years of Amazon packages reaching your doorstep.

(Gentle spoiler: Part of the reason we created Auth0 was that we didn't see this as a "solved problem;" We saw a lot of potential for the experience to be improved, and we also saw a world becoming more complex and subject to threats.)

<include src="ebook-ads/EvolutionCiam" />

## From 'Nobody' to 'Target'

In the beginning, I think consumers tended to see the process of registering for a website or logging in as an annoyance rather than something that was front and center. "Of course, I need to log in, but who cares? I'm going to use my very original password.' And who's going to check that I'm using the same password for ordering tasty sandwiches, for ordering off eBay, and for my bank account. After all, nobody knows me." Most people in the world are not famous, and so they believed that anonymity would keep them safe because who would target an unknown person?

This clearly changed over time. Consumers suddenly started having problems remembering passwords, having their accounts hacked, dealing with getting locked out of an account, having multiple accounts for a website, or experiencing problems logging in. As our lives transition to all things being digital, and consequently, with more online accounts than ever, the problem got worse.

I believe we have proved that old problems have a nasty tendency to appear again. History will repeat itself, and in some cases, with new force. 

So [Customer Identity Access Management (CIAM)](https://auth0.com/blog/what-is-ciam/) was a solved problem that got unsolved again as our context evolved.

In fact, it was becoming worse every day because, in the process of creating strong customer experiences, organizations had been gathering and keeping a lot of data… and bad actors had realized that you didn't have to target a famous person to see a return on nefarious deeds &mdash; average people could be lucrative targets, too.

And as a lot of people &mdash; famous and average &mdash; turned to the internet for business, and for all things in life: education, healthcare, food, and entertainment, more value was out there to be stolen. This year has only accelerated this process.

![Future of CIAM 1](https://images.ctfassets.net/23aumh6u8s0i/4Qg4oGOVMcUz7islVLUnuO/dc72f7a985f919dc643de96fe4565c41/ciam-separator)
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## Mix in Complexity

Another aspect of today's reality is that an average middle-class house is also becoming more complex with crisscrossed and interconnected systems.

Just pause and think about all the devices and software you likely interact with on a daily basis.

You wake up. Your watch might have been monitoring your body all night. If you're like me, you head out for a run. Your watch or other wearables keep track of your running stats, or if you were going to the gym, your phone knows you are going there, so it shows the fastest route. Then take a shower and jump on the scale, which is WiFi enabled and sends your weight to your phone. Then you likely check your email or Slack; or have an early Zoom with colleagues. Then maybe you log into your bank. Then your kids' school assignments. Maybe it's getting chilly, so you alter the temperature in your home from your phone and send some music to get your day going through your home speakers.

There's a whole myriad of systems that are part of my daily routine, and they are all different. They are also all built, designed, and marketed by different companies. According to Think with Google, [the average person has 35 apps on their phone](https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/marketing-strategies/app-and-mobile/average-number-of-apps-on-smartphones/), plus apps that may be on other devices. 

And while they're all supplied by different vendors, they all have one thing in common:

They need to know who I am.

And who my family is. And what is the relationship between all the members? What is each person allowed to do (and not do, like rearrange my favorite playlist)? As well as those outside people and organizations that we deal with. 

It's pretty sensitive. 

The cameras in my home are watching my family, and my bank has my financial information. My health records, even my gym schedule &mdash; everything is pretty sensitive information.

The problem space has exploded in complexity. The old ways of solving these problems don't work anymore.

Even if you go with a password that is more complex than "_password_," we're dealing with literally tens or dozens or hundreds in some cases of applications that we need to interact with all the time. Now people are conscious that everybody is a target. That awareness of the situation is actually influencing the nature of the problem to be solved.

## The Case of the Flawed Candy Surprise

Thankfully, the mindset of consumers is changing. It's a funny story and a good example of how consumer behavior and expectations are changing (for good). This is what happened recently when I tried to surprise my mother.

My mom lives in Argentina. With travel restricted, I haven't been able to see her for a while, so I ordered a box of chocolates online and had them shipped to her home.

Remember, this is meant to be a surprise. A good one, but instead, it turned into a somewhat scary moment for her. When a random guy appears on her doorstep at 7 p.m. at night saying, "Ma'am, I have your chocolates.", she simply says, "No, I didn't order any chocolates. I'm not going to fall for that." Here we have someone involved in a relatively minor transaction rejecting it as suspicious. She knows she didn't order anything, it's kind of late, and I've never done that before. The context of all this raises some alarms.

Now it's pervasive. We are all on the watch. My mom rejected my chocolates and called me very proud, saying, "You know what happened to me? Somebody tried to trick me by pretending that I had ordered chocolates, and they wanted me to sign for them and show my identity card, so I rejected the package."

So now I have to do "multi-factor authentication" to send my mother a gift, "No, Mom," I say. "That was me. I was trying to send you a surprise. I'm going to send you another gift, and it will arrive on this day, and you can accept it."

I ended up sending another present. This particular use case also presents some interesting challenges from a user experience perspective, but that would probably require its own blog post. 

The bottom line is, like, it's very complex. It's not solved from a technical point-of-view or from a consumer end-user point-of-view.

## The Future Is Already Online

A recent Twilio survey found that COVID-19 has [accelerated organizations' digital transformation by an average of six years](https://www.twilio.com/hub/covid-19-myths-enterprise-digital-transformation-twilio-engagement-report). Some of our customers have said as many as seven or even 10. What does that mean for the average person?

The world that we're in has forced a lot of interactions in our lives to happen through a computer; whether the computer is an actual computer or a phone, it is irrelevant. And this has reached all levels of societies.

The digitalization of interactions has accelerated. Everybody &mdash; organizations and end-users &mdash; need to drive more and more with systems and software. And they all have one thing in common. It doesn't matter what they do &mdash; they need to know who you are to perform their function.

Are you a subscriber of this newspaper? Do you own this account in this bank? Do you have this Insurance policy? Are you a member of this club? A member of this gym? Are you a student from this class? Are you entitled to contribute to this particular campaign? Identity permeates everything. It has become a fundamental construct in all systems.

These completely unrelated systems all need to know who you are and then decide what you can do.

And businesses are now expected to not only keep pace with this change but remain ahead of it.

![Future of CIAM 2](https://images.ctfassets.net/23aumh6u8s0i/4zLAixTnRIBaqPFq55HI7A/efeedd42f5dfebd4876b10123fa3de99/ciam-separator)
<br />

## Immediate CIAM Challenges for Businesses

Because Auth0's been in identity for a while, I get asked a lot of questions about where the identity industry is going, in particular CIAM. It's really fun to think about things like intelligent agents having authorization to do things on your behalf and other topics, but faced with the rapid pandemic-induced shift online; I see a handful of immediate challenges for businesses.

* **Companies will have to continue to fine-tune security and user experience**. Shaping the customer experience often means exploring trade-offs between [security and user experience](https://auth0.com/blog/balancing-ux-and-security-at-auth0/). Finding that unique balance for a particular use case is part of why extensibility is such a large part of Auth0. But with the increase of Zoom classes and meetings, the number of bad actors coming for customer data has also increased. Given options, consumers will naturally migrate to the one who is more protective. 

* **Companies that know their customers best will succeed**. Understanding your customer is key to delivering experiences to keep them returning to your brand. With increasing data privacy laws, that means securing customer consent to share information. [PwC research](https://www.pwc.com/us/en/advisory-services/publications/consumer-intelligence-series/pwc-consumer-intelligence-series-customer-experience.pdf) found that providing great experiences means access to more information &mdash; 63% of respondents said positive experiences made them more willing to share information. But not understanding your customers' expectations can have rapid negative effects. A third of those surveyed said a single bad experience would cause them to abandon a brand they love.

* **Only companies who don't make it hard to onboard or login, will be successful at retaining customers**. With COVID-19's acceleration of digital transformation, customers have accelerated expectations. As companies expand partnerships, they're drawing data from multiple sources and often asking customers to traverse multiple brands during their buying journey. Partnering with other businesses often means introducing [legacy challenges](https://auth0.com/blog/how-to-improve-customer-experience-in-your-mixed-environment/) at a time when it's increasingly important to get your product to market to deliver seamless experiences across brands and loyalty programs. Customers expect your solution to suit their needs &mdash; in real time.

* **Privacy will be paramount**. The ironic silver lining of data breaches is that they have raised awareness for the average person that their personal data is valuable and deserves to be protected. For organizations, this means starting to think of [data as a liability](https://auth0.com/blog/avoid-sinking-your-code-by-treating-data-as-a-liability/). But at the same time, customers expect organizations to recognize them and only pause their interactions during key moments &mdash; like when they need to make a payment or share sensitive health care information. There's a lot of complexity around how much data to gather, how long to store it, and when you might need to ask your customer to interrupt their experiences with additional verification. Data privacy laws, in effect, shift the power back to the consumer because breaches aren't just about accidentally letting someone into the database, but neglectful care of the consumer data and trust.


As Dave Limp, Amazon Senior Vice President, Devices & Services, said at the [2019 Geekwire Summit](https://www.geekwire.com/special-coverage/geekwire-summit-2019/), "Sometimes there are gray areas, and then you don't know how to write code." Figuring out the right mix of security, privacy, and convenience that provides the ideal experiences for your current and future customers isn't easy, but that's part of why we created Auth0.

## Code vs. No Code

Solution architects and developers are tasked with building things from scratch. The key is choosing the right building blocks. With very few exceptions, no one would build a database from scratch. Or re-invent a new communications protocol. And this is true for the vast majority of applications that businesses need &mdash;. The role of the application builders has become deciding what they are going to build on and what they will make themselves.

There isn't one out-of-the-box solution that will satisfy every legacy, security, privacy, convenience requirement that allows you to rapidly scale for the future. While many CIAM solutions are consolidating, there is a real risk that the solution only solves for the challenges the solution sees at the moment and not for a future when you might need to send your mother in Argentina a box of chocolates during the pandemic.

The power of Auth0 is that it provides developers with out-of-the-box power for the most common requirements **_and_** the building blocks of identity that allow them to build on the foundation of a [modern approach to application development](https://auth0.com/resources/whitepapers/state-app-assembly-2020). 

But application builders are a skilled bunch, and sometimes your marketing team wants to test rapid changes, like, for instance, altering the color of the login box to adjust to a brand change. These kinds of changes can easily be handled by the marketing team and allow you to save your developer for more complex problems, like solving for future needs. There will always be things that we think of as advanced features that every customer will come to expect.

But the very best CRM (customer relationship management) systems operate completely behind-the-scenes. And this is not to be underestimated. This kind of invisibility doesn't just happen naturally. It requires grace and skill on the part of an organizations' team as well as the identity vendor (ideally Auth0) they choose to help deliver that experience because the best identity experience for your customer is the one that pretends not to exist so that your customer doesn't have an annoying interaction with a login box but signs in directly to your brand.

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The Evolution of CIAM

auziros:mckenzie-mayer

Customer Identity (CIAM) Product Comms lead, driving collective storytelling across Okta and Auth0. Making technology accessible for everyone.

Customer Identity Product Comms Lead at Okta

McKenzie Mayer

Cloud-based identity management enables safe and convenient digital experiences for financial customers



**LONDON – 7 December 2020 –** The [Auth0](https://auth0.com/) Identity Platform, a product unit within Okta, today announced that [Ninety One](https://ninetyone.com/en/south-africa/) has deployed its solution to authenticate retail fund investors in South Africa. Started in South Africa as Investec Asset Management, the firm spun out from parent Investec and rebranded as Ninety One this year. Ninety One replaced their on-premises identity solution with Auth0 as part to provide customers with a seamless login experience across its investment products.

Following the demerger and listing, Ninety One required its own [Customer Identity and Access Management (CIAM)](https://auth0.com/blog/what-is-ciam/) infrastructure, including Single Sign On, Multi-factor Authentication, and self-service password reset features. Ninety One’s own development team and a local transfer agency and administrative outsourcing partner, Silica, recommended Auth0 for ease of integration and the ability to host in the cloud while migrating users gradually from the previous on-premises system. 

“The move to Auth0 is indicative of our journey in other parts of the organization,” says Scott Carr, IT platforms manager at Ninety One. “We have embraced Auth0 as essential for our success as a new brand because they enable us to provide the caliber of safe and convenient digital experiences our financial services clients demand.”

IT security spending in the META region (Middle East, Turkey, and Africa) will cross $3.4B in 2023, driven by a focus on [digital identities and shifts to the cloud](https://www.biznesstransform.com/idc-predicts-major-spending-on-digital-transformation-by-the-ict-industry-in-meta/) (Source: IDC)[1]. Auth0 has been recognized as a top private cloud company in identity management on the [Forbes Cloud 100](https://auth0.com/blog/auth0-is-named-to-the-2020-forbes-cloud-100/) and by industry analysts for serving as a key enabler in customers’ [digital transformation](https://auth0.com/forrester-total-economic-impact) efforts.

“Digital transformation shouldn’t be underestimated, but it doesn’t have to be feared either,” said Steven Rees-Pullman, SVP International at Auth0. “Ninety One is looking to the cloud and replacing legacy systems with building blocks like Auth0 to be more adaptable and resilient while delivering great experiences for their clients. We’re pleased to help power their journey.”

[1] IDC Worldwide Black Book Live Edition, July 2020

## About Ninety One

Ninety One is an independent, active investment manager dedicated to delivering compelling outcomes for its clients, managing more than £119 billion/R2.6 trillion in assets (as at 30.09.20).

Established in South Africa in 1991, as Investec Asset Management, the firm started offering domestic investments in an emerging market. In 2020, almost three decades of organic growth later, the firm demerged from Investec Group and became Ninety One. Today the firm offers distinctive active strategies across equities, fixed income, multi-asset, and alternatives to institutions, advisors, and individual investors around the world.

[www.ninetyone.com](https://ninetyone.com/international) 

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### Media Contacts

Media Contacts <br />
McKenzie Mayer <br />
PR Manager, EMEA <br />
press@auth0.com <br />

Kotie Basson <br />
Head of Marketing, Africa Client Group <br />
Ninety One <br />
kotie.basson@ninetyone.com <br />


Ninety One Chooses Auth0 as Foundation for Digital Transformation

Global identity management provider one of the first AWS Partners to give AWS customers seamless access to professional services in AWS Marketplace



**BELLEVUE, Wash. – December 3, 2020** – The [Auth0](https://auth0.com/) Identity Platform, a product unit within Okta, today announced that it is participating in the launch of Professional Services in AWS Marketplace. Amazon Web Services (AWS) customers can now find and purchase professional services from Auth0 in AWS Marketplace, a curated digital catalog of software, data, and services that makes it easy to find, test, buy, and deploy software and data products that run on AWS. As a participant in the launch, Auth0 is one of the first independent software vendors to quote and contract services in AWS Marketplace to help customers implement, support, and manage their software on AWS. [Click here](https://aws.amazon.com/marketplace/seller-profile?id=0079abaf-bc2f-481c-9543-d2bfedb81003) for more information. 

As organizations migrate to the cloud, they want to use their preferred software solutions on AWS. AWS customers often utilize professional services from Auth0 to help implement the Auth0 platform and enable interoperability with their applications. Until now, AWS customers had to find and contract professional services outside of AWS Marketplace and could not acquire an identity platform solution and associated professional services in a single procurement experience. With professional services from Auth0 available in AWS Marketplace, customers have a simplified way to purchase and pay for both their subscription to the Auth0 platform and related professional services in a centralized place. 

“Auth0 is proud to offer professional services in AWS Marketplace and provide AWS customers with additional support they may need for any identity implementation,” said Bill Lapcevic, VP of Business Development at Auth0. “We are excited to be one of the first independent software vendors to offer professional services as part of this launch and look forward to providing an even more comprehensive identity offering for AWS customers.”

Auth0 is an AWS Advanced Technology Partner that is participating in AWS re:Invent 2020, taking place November 30 - December 18, 2020. To learn more, visit: [https://info.auth0.com/auth0-at-aws.html](https://info.auth0.com/auth0-at-aws.html). 

<include src="asides/AboutAuth0" />

### Media Contacts
Global Communications <br />
Auth0 <br />
[press@auth0.com](mailto:press@auth0.com) <br />

Matter for Auth0 <br />
[auth0@matternow.com](mailto:auth0@matternow.com) <br />


Auth0 Supports the Launch of Professional Services in AWS Marketplace

Salesforce's Next Generation Identity demands the scalability, agility, and connected digital experiences that Auth0 offers



**BELLEVUE, Wash. – November 17, 2020 –** The [Auth0](https://auth0.com/) Identity Platform, a product unit within Okta, today announced it has been selected as the identity provider to power authentication for Salesforce Customer 360 Identity, its best-in-class consumer identity and access management (CIAM) technology, providing a single, trusted identity for more streamlined user management. Salesforce Customer 360 Identity will go into a pilot phase at the end of the year and will be generally available in early 2021. 

Salesforce Customer 360 Identity is one of four products that comprise [Customer 360 Truth](https://www.salesforce.com/products/platform/features/customer-360-truth/), a set of data and identity services that enable companies to build a single source of truth for relevant and lasting customer relationships. The leading CIAM, data management, customer data platform, and privacy tools available in Customer 360 Truth provides a unified customer view to maintain customer privacy, security, connect siloed data systems, and harness new digital business.

Driving the frictionless login experiences for all Customer 360 Identity users, Auth0 will provide a seamless signup to drive better conversions, the ability to scale to any size, and a single customer login across all users' digital properties, eliminating siloed data and providing a single source of truth for IT departments. 

"The need for digital transformation has reached new heights, challenging companies to deliver simple, connected, and trusted experiences online," said Patrick Stokes, EVP, Platform Shared Services at Salesforce. "Customer 360 Truth delivers just that. And, combined with Auth0, companies will be able to engage with their customers like never have before—authenticating millions of users quickly and securely."

"Customer data is the cornerstone of Customer Success and hinges on the ability to have a comprehensive view of your customers," said Nick Mehta, CEO of Gainsight. "As a customer of both Auth0 and Salesforce, I'm excited about their integration to help streamline how we access and map user data."

Auth0's deep developer roots and the ability to provide a superior pro-code developer experience offers a natural integration into Salesforce's platform. Auth0's platform provides the out-of-box experience that most customers need and also allows their developers to easily customize their login flows via code and the large library of integrations readily available from the Marketplace. 

"Persistent challenges B2C customers face&mdash;scale, needing a holistic view of the customer, and enhanced security&mdash;are consistent across the industry, especially with the urgent speed in which companies are prioritizing their transformation efforts," said Shiven Ramji, Chief Product Officer at Auth0. "We believe this need will intensify as more businesses are forced to transform and we look forward to working with Salesforce customers going through this process."

In July 2020, Salesforce Ventures was the lead investor in Auth0's $120 million Series F round, bringing Auth0's valuation to $1.92 billion and total capital raised to more than $330 million. 

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### Media Contacts
Global Communications <br />
Auth0 <br />
[press@auth0.com](mailto:press@auth0.com) <br />

Hannah Carroll <br />
Matter for Auth0 <br />
[auth0@matternow.com](mailto:auth0@matternow.com) <br />


Auth0 Selected as Identity Vendor of Choice for Salesforce Customer 360 Identity

jessica-sealby

Jessica drives public relations and global communications efforts for Auth0 across Asia Pacific. Outside Auth0, she frequents Melbourne’s live music venues and chases after her two energetic dogs.

PR Manager - APAC

Jessica Sealby

Identity management serves as essential technology for a global car manufacturer to streamline customer experience



**BELLEVUE, Wash. – November 16, 2020 –** The [Auth0](https://auth0.com/) Identity Platform, a product unit within Okta, today announced that Subaru Corporation has chosen Auth0 to provide secure identity management for its newly launched online customer experience, “My Subaru.” Auth0’s secure and frictionless customer authentication experience serves as an essential element in Subaru’s leading approach to customer engagement and meeting the demands of shifting consumer behavior. 

“My Subaru” was designed to support the corporation’s digital transformation efforts and appeal to the industry trend of consumers researching cars online more than ever before. Auth0 will serve as the primary authentication provider for Subaru and will provide assistance in creating a foundational CRM and identity system for managing customer information in a secure manner. Driven by Japan’s Personal Information Protection Act&mdash;which requires companies to show how customer information is being received and managed&mdash;there is a widespread need for proper authentication and digital ID management solutions across the region. Auth0 will assist in compliance with this regulation. 

For Subaru, customer experience could not exist without advanced security, and keeping customers’ personal information safeguarded was paramount. Auth0 was chosen for its ease-of-use, speed of deployment, and extensibility, together with its ability to provide multi-factor authentication (MFA) for even more secure digital engagement. 

“Auth0 is a key factor in our ability to enhance our customers’ online experience, and also provides us with secure identity management. In the near future, we plan to launch a portal service compliant with the Personal Information Protection Act through Auth0’s technology,” said Atsushi Yasumuro, Chief of Business Innovation at Subaru Corporation. “Auth0 is exactly the kind of authentication solution that allows us to achieve Subaru’s vision of ‘Peace of mind & enjoyment,’ giving us the confidence that we are securing customers’ data while offering them the best experience possible.”

The automotive industry is facing a major transition in purchasing behavior, fueling Subaru’s considerable investment in its online offering. The company required an entirely new infrastructure and approach to managing customer information, focusing on integrated CRM software and an identity platform. Auth0 is a vital means for Subaru to build stronger relationships with customers, offer greater post-purchase service, and remain a leader in this highly competitive space.

“We’ve seen enormous momentum around digital transformation in the region. Combined with updated regulations around customer data management, it is more important than ever that identity management becomes a critical piece of any digital foundation,” said Eugenio Pace, co-founder, and CEO of Auth0. “We are honored to work with Subaru on its industry-leading online offering, and look forward to merging identity security with their online presence into one seamless experience.” 

With more than 550,000 users on its owner-oriented “My Subaru” application, Subaru’s goal is to improve consumer engagement and users’ before and after sales experience through universal identification and the identity work in place now with Auth0 will help the company achieve its ambitious goals into the future.

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### Media Contacts
Jessica Sealby <br />
Auth0 PR Manager, APAC <br />
[jessica.sealby@auth0.com](mailto:jessica.sealby@auth0.com)


Auth0 Supports Subaru Corporation with Digital Transformation Shift

Australian software giant provides simple login experience for customers; focuses on security and identity.



**BELLEVUE, WA – May 18, 2020 –** The [Auth0](https://auth0.com/) Identity Platform, a product unit within Okta, is powering identity management for [Atlassian](https://www.atlassian.com/), a leading provider of team collaboration and productivity software. Atlassian has been using Auth0 to secure and simplify its identity and authentication process for customers and millions of users around the world.

Atlassian builds collaboration and productivity software to help businesses organize, discuss, and complete shared work, including Walmart Labs, Merrill Lynch, Bank of America, and Verizon. With the multitude of products it provides (Jira, Confluence, Trello, Opsgenie, and more), Atlassian relies on Auth0 for flexible, configurable authentication that has allowed it to balance better collaboration for users and the security controls needed by administrators. Outsourcing authentication also enables Atlassian to focus its valuable development team on product innovation. 

As Atlassian continues its rapid growth, it is placing a renewed focus on a Single Sign On (SSO) solution to all its products and support systems for millions of users worldwide, placing a high importance on identity. Auth0’s identity platform is providing a simple login experience removing a barrier to entry for many Atlassian cloud customers as they expand their use of Atlassian products. 

Working with Auth0 has helped Atlassian build out key identity features like multi-factor authentication (MFA), Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML) support, and OAuth, which has helped evolve its third-party ecosystem and address security and privacy needs among its customer base.

“The security of our customers is very important to us, and we want to ensure our administrators’ information is held securely. Auth0 has been integral in offering our administrators and users that level of confidence,” said William Bath, Head of Engineering for Identity at Atlassian. 

Atlassian is constantly innovating and bringing new product capabilities to the market. Working with Auth0 gives Atlassian simple, powerful, and developer-friendly identity building blocks so they can free up resources to focus on its core business value. It has also allowed the company to quickly and simply keep pace with new integrations such as Sign in with Apple and login through Microsoft Accounts. 

“The best login experience is one that you barely notice, yet keeps your account secure,” added Bath. “Auth0 allows us to offer a simple, fast, reliable, and secure login experience. With that, we’re helping more and more teams collaborate and have a greater impact.” 

“Atlassian has been an incredibly valued customer for some time, and we are thrilled to continue to serve as an identity partner to them as they expand their global footprint with the highest quality collaboration and productivity software and services,” said Richard Marr, General Manager for the Asia Pacific at Auth0. “Auth0 provides a simple, extensible, and scalable platform to secure identities so Atlassian can concentrate on the innovation that drives its success.”

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### Media Contacts
Jessica Sealby<br>
Auth0 APAC Communications<br>
[press@auth0.com](mailto:press@auth0.com)


Atlassian Authenticates Millions Of Users with Auth0

Electric utility centralises identity management for several million customers


**LONDON — 15 October 2019 —** [Auth0](https://auth0.com/), a global leader in Identity-as-a-Service (IDaaS), today announced its partnership with German energy company [EnBW Energie Baden-Württemberg AG (EnBW)](https://www.enbw.com/company/). EnBW is one of the largest energy companies in Germany and Europe and supplies around several million customers with electricity, gas, and water, as well as energy-related solutions and services. 

Using Auth0, private and business customers of EnBW as well as its subsidiary, Yello, will be able to access several digital services quickly and securely with a single login, including the customer portal, "My EnBW" and the EnBW mobility+ app. The cloud-based identity solution helps EnBW consolidate its previously decentralised login interfaces and simplify the authentication process for customers. This not only increases EnBW's efficiency in managing identity for several million customers but also improves the customer experience. [Auth0 complies with all GDPR regulations](https://auth0.com/explore/data-privacy/) and stores data regionally in the Amazon Web Services (AWS) data centre in Frankfurt.

"Digital transformation is more than just an isolated project or the development of an app. Rather, it is a matter of laying a long-term technical foundation for improving proximity to the customer. By using the Auth0 solution, we are able to do just that. This enables us to offer a consistent customer experience across all digital services," says Florian Riedl, head of digitisation at EnBW. "Authentication is an important building block when it comes to customer experience. This applies not only to new customers but above all to existing ones."

"Organisations like EnBW use our solution to learn more about their customers' needs. This is an important differentiator in a highly-competitive market," said Steven Rees-Pullman, GM of EMEA at Auth0. "We're pleased to work with EnBW as they digitise their business and provide new services to their customers."

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### Media Contacts:

Silvia Hänig<br/>
shaenig@wireside.com<br/>
haenig@i-kom.org<br/>
0173-3838572<br/>
089-44848127<br/>

Mark Fowler<br/>
Racepoint Global for Auth0, EMEA<br/>
[auth0@racepointglobal.com](mailto:auth0@racepointglobal.com)<br/>
+44 (0) 77 1124 4113


EnBW Uses Auth0 to Improve its Customer Experience

To stay competitive, media companies have to deliver seamless experiences built around customer identity. The race starts at login.



Today’s media consumers enjoy an incredible array of content and have an unprecedented number of choices for how, when, and where to consume it. In this saturated environment, media heads of product are engaged in a war for consumer attention. The winners are the companies that curate the most relevant content for each user, with simple, intuitive platforms that keep them coming back for more.

The media companies that are most successful at keeping consumer attention are those with the most intensive surgical focus on creating a personalized user experience. Netflix, for instance, doesn’t merely use its insights to recommend shows; they even tailor the [thumbnail images](https://www.vox.com/2018/11/21/18106394/why-your-netflix-thumbnail-coverart-changes) of those shows to different demographics and what they find most irresistible. Achieving this level of personalization requires media outlets to possess a deep and holistic understanding of each customer, not one that is fragmented across channels or devices.

In this piece, we’ll explore how uniting customer identity in a single view will enable UX that caters directly to your customers’ preferences. Building UX around identity is crucial for heads of production who want to make their platforms stand out rather than be one more dish in the endless media smorgasbord.

## Simplify Authentication Across Devices

The era of the internet of things (IoT) presents exciting possibilities for both media producers and consumers as more smart devices become capable of delivering content. But the promise of seamless, nearly effortless device usage is often stymied at the login screen.

As anyone who has tried to type their email address with a TV remote can attest, there are few UX experiences more painful than attempting to log in with a device that was never intended for entering credentials. This frustration and its cost to UX are avoidable if you implement [single sign-on (SSO)](https://auth0.com/blog/implementing-single-sign-on-in-b2c-applications/). With SSO, when users log in to an application with one set of credentials, they are automatically signed into other applications. The primary UX benefit of this is that it simplifies authentication across devices and accelerates the time to first login.

<include src="TweetQuote" quoteText="The era of the internet of things (IoT) presents exciting possibilities for both media producers and consumers as more smart devices become capable of delivering content."/>

With a sophisticated customer identity and access management (CIAM) solution like Auth0, you can use SSO to shift the login process to other devices, which are more user-friendly and are already associated with user profiles.

![Login Process](https://images.ctfassets.net/23aumh6u8s0i/01aER9PsXDQQNimIMoPUdF/4b03aa9398019f303bd1a13e1955ec2f/login-process)

Using [OAuth Device Flow](https://auth0.com/blog/oauth-device-flow-no-hassle-authentication-as-seen-on-tv/), a user trying to log in to your app via their smart TV won’t have to fiddle with their remote. Instead, they’ll be directed to visit a URL on their computer or smartphone, enter a short code, and complete the authentication process with far less friction. Aside from ease of use, shifting authentication to a browser also improves security, since users don’t have to directly expose their credentials to their smart devices.

## Reduce the Number of Required Logins

The login box is your first impression with a customer. At best, a time-consuming login means that customers begin their session with an unpleasant experience. At worst, it means they browse without logging in, robbing you of the chance to present them with personalized content. The solutions to this issue hinge on using your view of the customer to minimize the number of times they have to re-enter their credentials.

For multi-brand media companies, a seamless customer experience starts with SSO. For example, we’re all familiar with SSO when we log in to Google and are automatically logged in to YouTube. That feature is critical in enabling YouTube to recognize users and recommend videos tailored to their interests.

<include src="TweetQuote" quoteText="The login box is your first impression with a customer. At best, a time-consuming login means that customers begin their session with an unpleasant experience."/>

Another effective tactic to reduce tedious logins is implementing [long-lived sessions](https://auth0.com/blog/when-ux-equals-keeping-or-losing-the-customer/) for users. Long-lived sessions let developers extend the login period before idle time-outs, in which users are automatically logged out after a certain period of inactivity. Whereas maintaining a brief window for idle time-outs makes sense for apps that handle highly sensitive information, it often hurts media companies. If you have a user who typically logs on once a month to read new content, forcing them to log in each time harms UX without providing any real benefit.

![Long-Lived Sessions Diagram](https://images.ctfassets.net/23aumh6u8s0i/7mEOMklyIKITdeeLKYnAYw/c6c49224407e2e7fb40afe1595e156c9/long-lived-sessions)

If you choose to explore long-lived sessions, it’s crucial to have a CIAM provider like Auth0 that lets you tailor the system to your business. Auth0 lets you customize session limits of up to 100 days, which you can adjust based on the level of risk your business is comfortable with. You can also apply rules that require users to authenticate when engaging in activities such as changing payment details. It’s crucial to maintain this level of customization with long-lived sessions; otherwise, your short-term UX gains can be erased by compromised security.

## Create a Consistent Experience with an Identity Directory

In a media ecosystem that is often overwhelming to users, the ideal UX is a place where one’s needs are understood and catered to the moment one logs in. To achieve this uniform, curated experience across platforms, consider storing user profiles on a centralized directory.

It’s vital to have rich, holistic profiles that function as the authoritative source of truth about your customer. That way, even if a user logs in via social media at one point, and email the next, both logins still feed into a single profile. With this approach, profiles and content recommendations stay relevant even as login behaviors evolve.

Having a single profile — as opposed to duplicates across login methods or devices — ensures that your company’s advertising and marketing efforts are appropriate rather than intrusive. Lacking this alignment can have a negative effect on UX; [a recent study](https://www.marketingcharts.com/customer-centric/privacy-and-security-107946) found that 66% of consumers disliked being targeted too many times, and 44% were annoyed if targeted for too long.

Auth0 offers customers the ability to host their directories on their own servers or on the secure Auth0 server. If your needs change, you can [move your directory to Auth0](https://auth0.com/blog/the-three-best-ways-to-create-the-single-vision-of-a-customer/) without requiring that customers undergo a disruptive password reset. This model lets you scale, which results in consistent delivery of good UX even as you grow.

## Use Identity to Become a Content Concierge

In this crowded media landscape, compelling content is no longer enough to attract and retain customers. Consumers increasingly demand that companies not only select the most relevant and valuable content for them but also deliver it across all their devices with minimal effort.

Understanding your users’ identity is at the core of great UX. That’s why attaining a single vision of the customer is such an effective digital initiative for media heads of product. To do this project justice, be sure to partner with a CIAM that can provide an experience as simple, yet as customizable, as the one you offer your customers. If you’d like to learn more about how Auth0 can help you quickly create a CIAM solution that suits your needs, please reach out to an [Auth0 resource](mailto: sales@auth0.com).

<include src="asides/AboutAuth0" />

---


How To Improve CX/UX Through A Single Vision Of The Customer

df6c864847fba9687d962cb80b482764?size=200 avatar

df6c864847fba9687d962cb80b482764?size=200

Martin Gontovnikas, a.k.a Gonto, is a software engineer at heart who moved to the ‘dark side’ and became VP of Marketing at Auth0. He considers himself lucky to have found a way to combine his two passions and apply his engineering thinking model to marketing.<br/><br/> Gonto’s analytical thinking is a huge driver of his data-driven approach to marketing strategy and experimental design. He is based in the Bay area, and in his spare time, can be found eating gourmet food at the best new restaurants, visiting every local brewery he can find, or traveling the globe in search of new experiences.

Former SVP of Marketing and Growth at Auth0

Martin Gontovnikas

New customer acquisitions channels await if you can walk the tightrope between B2B and B2C.


> Customer acquisition costs can make or break a business. 

The more it costs to acquire a customer, the more value businesses have to get from that customer to make a profit. If the value of each customer is less than the money it takes to acquire them, no investor's wallet will be deep enough to sustain the company for the long term. 

Some companies are turning to other businesses to acquire customers, developing business models that tie mutually beneficial links between the companies and their customers. In this model, called B2B2C, one business offers a service to a business that needs it, but the first business retains the customers it gains. 

Grubhub, a popular delivery app, is an example. When you order your dinner through Grubhub, you can access dozens of restaurants in your local area. You're simultaneously the customer of Grubhub and whichever restaurant you choose. GrubHub didn't sell their product to the restaurant (B2B), nor did they make the food you're about to eat (B2C). This is the B2B2C business model in action. 

B2B2C offers a compelling mix of B2B and B2C advantages to startups searching for product-market fit and to established companies looking to acquire new customers. When done right, it's win-win-win for both of the businesses and their customers. 

## What is B2B2C?

B2B2C describes a business model where your company sells a product or service to another business, which gets you access to customers you get to keep and use. Here are the key differentiators for B2B2C:

1. Your business offers a horizontal solution to another business's problem.
2. The other business's customers recognize that they're also your customers.

![Image of Business to business to consumer acronym (B2B2C)](https://images.ctfassets.net/23aumh6u8s0i/u2b5DKGwQGoT0HFSNvDwq/50d62116826610c3c7734a26a9903c40/b2b2c-separator-01.png)

Take another look at Grubhub: It sells a horizontal feature to the restaurants around you. Many of them can't offer delivery, and most of them don't have the funds to build out a consumer-facing app—much less provide customer support for it. 

If a restaurant partners with Grubhub, they get to offer their previous customers a new feature, potentially resulting in more orders and higher customer satisfaction. When Grubhub partners with a restaurant, they get access to those customers and can maintain that relationship as they order from other restaurants in other locations. 

The B2B2C model is more than a mutually beneficial relationship between businesses: It requires that customers develop direct but separable relationships with both brands.  

Your local grocery store didn't form a B2B2C relationship with Coca-Cola to sell soda. This is a vendor relationship: Coca-Cola sells their product at wholesale to another business, which sells it to you for a marked-up price; Coca-Cola doesn't sell soda to you directly. 

Another easy-to-mix-up B2B relationship is white labeling. Take [Bread, for example](https://www.getbread.com/blog/truth-about-white-labeling/). Bread offers a white-labeled product for stores that want to offer financing. You might notice a horizontal value here. But the nature of a white-label relationship is that customers don't know they're using Bread; they just know there's a new button when they check out.  

In a true B2B2C deal, the business you're selling to gets a problem solved, and your business gets access to a new customer base that isn't fixed to the prior business. 

## Why B2B2C Can Create Strategic Customer Growth

B2B2C deals combine two of the best features from B2C and B2B models: network effects and predictable growth plans. 

If you acquire entire customer bases through B2B2C deals, you can use that data to fuel further acquisition and iteration. The more you know about your customers, the better you can find them and serve them. 

Network effects are typically the domain of B2C companies — Facebook and Google being [prime examples](https://stratechery.com/2018/the-moat-map/). Unfortunately for other B2C companies, network effects have discouraging, downstream influences. Google's product improves as it acquires users, which means that any Google competitors have to find ways to improve their product without the same access to feedback. 

With a B2B2C model, you can get around some of those effects. Each B2B2C deal offers you customers and data, but you can build on those network effects in chunks rather than drips. With this kind of acquisition, you can plan for network effects. 

OpenTable, a B2B2C company that offers online reservations with restaurants, builds network effects into its email marketing. Initial user acquisition typically starts with users seeking a reservation to a local restaurant, but once users join the service, they get restaurant recommendations tailored to them based on users in their area. 

![OpenTable web site screenshot](https://images.ctfassets.net/23aumh6u8s0i/4UXoeaHxiRqDirf84Nx5Xm/7759092d29a0a3794befa9da5ea8e1f7/open-table)

With network effects providing a tailwind, OpenTable's horizontal service shows users that they're now OpenTable customers and that there's value in being an active participant in the service.  

By making deals with businesses instead of navigating waves of consumer trends, you can also make a more predictable, long-term growth plan. 

Hero, another company with a B2B2C business model, has this planning potential. Hero enables retail employees in physical stores to connect with online shoppers through chat and live video. 

![Hero live from showroom application](https://images.ctfassets.net/23aumh6u8s0i/2GtFDECEq6H2GISKqnJ3x7/a4acaa4798fc466e589d33721715eaf6/hero-showroom)
*[Source](https://blog.usehero.com/selling-iconic-designs-online-how-jonathan-adler-maximizes-its-stores-potential-with-hero-e344f5c94694)*

Hero provides a digital layer for physical retailers. That way, physical retailers can still interact with online consumers by showing them products and sharing information.

Instead of acquiring users directly, Hero can chart its growth against a much smaller selection of stores and chains. 

This growth plan is advantageous because B2B companies [tend to have less churn](https://www.profitwell.com/blog/how-b2b-and-b2c-companies-solve-churn-for-different-customers) than B2C companies. Consumers have a wide variety of services to turn to, and might churn because they lose interest, find a better product, or decide they could no longer afford it. B2B companies try to solve business problems, so client interest isn't as likely to wane and there might not be many alternatives if the market is niche. 

With B2B sales, you can focus on building a sales team that pursues and maintains fewer, but larger,  accounts. As each B2B client offers a group of customers, you can still [get the data](https://auth0.com/blog/three-tools-to-improve-your-customer-intelligence/) that cultivates successful B2C growth. 

A B2B2C company can iterate its service with each customer but plan its growth with each client. 

## B2B2C Customers Need Identity Infrastructure

B2B2C business models rely on an infrastructure that enables cross-platform user management. With white-labeled [identity infrastructure](https://auth0.com/blog/what-is-identity-infrastructure/) from Auth0, you can make authentication seamless and secure so that customers can focus on using and enjoying your product.

### Single Sign On (SSO)

Asking users to remember another set of credentials is a big request. According to a Digital Guardian survey, [nearly a third of users](https://digitalguardian.com/blog/uncovering-password-habits-are-users-password-security-habits-improving-infographic) already have too many password-protected credentials to count. If they're trying your service out for the first time, you don’t want to create friction.

Look at the identity needs of a [company like GO1](https://auth0.com/learn/go1-adaptable-authentication-service-built-scale/), for instance. GO1 is a B2B2C company that works with learning management system providers to build a repository of compliance and professional development content. With one subscription, end-users get access to this volume of valuable content, and businesses can better enable employee growth. 

Seamless authentication is key for this level of engagement. Self-development isn’t always easy, and users facing a login screen every time they want to view a resource or test a new module could make the experience even harder. GO1’s long-term success rests on consistently showing users the value of new knowledge and making it simple for them to pursue it.

![The Go1 Site screenshot](https://images.ctfassets.net/23aumh6u8s0i/453YMGqqDX01MzeD1ETKmR/0aec12fee74f33cd95e9f24fc5f971a7/go1-site)

[Single Sign On (SSO)](https://auth0.com/blog/what-is-and-how-does-single-sign-on-work/) enables users to log in with one set of credentials — and stay logged in — creating a seamless experience that lets the GO1 product shine through. 

As GO1 expands to new use cases, such as enabling job search companies to prompt their applicants to complete training via GO1 before applying, the authentication experience becomes even more important. Expansion requires integrating with different authentication protocols, such as SAML and LDAP. An outsourced identity provider can help you consistently [scale a high-level authentication experience](https://auth0.com/blog/the-real-roi-of-auth0-part-2-innovation/) without consuming your developer resources. 

### Security and Privacy

A B2B2C business model also relies on the ability to safely manage users. 

If you want to sell another business on your service, the advantages of that deal need to outweigh the risk associated with introducing a third party. The network effects that make a B2B2C deal valuable depend on data, so your customers need to be able to trust you with that data. 

Since B2B2C typically involves one business positioning its service as an add-on to another business's service, a [data breach](https://auth0.com/blog/what-is-a-data-breach/) can be especially dangerous. Users are already getting value from the main service, so if your security practices develop a poor reputation, you'll be easy to avoid. And if the [data breach is high profile](https://auth0.com/blog/11-of-the-worst-data-breaches-in-media/), the main business might drop your service to keep its users safe. 

Auth0 is a trusted, vetted identity provider, as proven by our adherence to best-in-class [compliance frameworks](https://auth0.com/security/). By offering robust security features, you can demonstrate to users, and the business offering them to you, that you can treat their data with care. 

Counterintuitively, adding security also grants you the opportunity to learn more about your users. Auth0 offers [progressive profiling tools](https://auth0.com/blog/how-profile-enrichment-and-progressive-profiling-can-boost-your-marketing/) so that you can learn more about your customers over time. Rather than barrage them with questions all at once, you can get different bits of information every time they log in: their name the first time, their address the second, their industry the third, and so on. 

Security can bolster, not slow down, your network effects. 

### Branding and White Labeling 

An essential feature of a successful B2B2C relationship is that your newly acquired customers actually identify as your customers. If your brand name merely flashes by as customers proceed with their normal flows, then you're not getting the full value of the B2B2C deal. 

The B2B2C relationship is already fairly complex, and customers are liable to confuse which business they need to contact for support in different contexts. If you can white label any of the supporting infrastructures you need to manage users, your relationship with them will be simpler. 

With Auth0's [Guardian](https://auth0.com/multifactor-authentication), you can build a multi-factor authentication application that matches your brand's look and feel. Combined with an extensive JavaScript library, you can further customize Guardian to your specific needs. 

Branding is powerful, and with the right tools, your customers are better able to see your service and remember its value. 

## Is Your Business Right for B2B2C?

B2B2C relies on aligned incentives and on businesses that can maintain that alignment. 

The business you're selling to has to want another brand involved, not just your service or solution. If that business only wants a new feature, a true B2B2C deal will be difficult to strike and hard to maintain. 

Look for these deals by pursuing companies that already offer a range of services or products. They'll likely be more open to adding yours to their portfolio. If you come into the deal with a well-run customer success team, you can [pitch that support](https://blog.getbase.com/sales-support-drive-acquisition). The less that business has to worry about the problems your solution might introduce for their customers, the better.  

B2B2C can be your core business model, or it can be a growth stage. Uber started as a digital, on-demand cab service; now it offers delivery at scale through Uber Eats. Instacart started as a grocery delivery service, but there's speculation it might [pivot to B2C](https://www.forbes.com/sites/brittainladd/2019/02/11/killing-instacart-why-the-company-is-at-risk-of-crashing-to-the-ground/#551d52d536e8) by leveraging user data to open its own grocery stores. 

To strike a B2B2C deal, your service has to offer horizontal value. To succeed with a B2B2C deal, new users have to identify as your customers. 

Getting the deal depends on a good sales team and the right product alignment. Succeeding with the deal depends on supporting users with the right identity infrastructure and the best authentication experience.  

<include src="asides/AboutAuth0" />


B2B2C Customer Acquisition Needs Identity Infrastructure

jorge-fatta

Jorge is a Software Engineer that enjoys building tools for colleagues. He manages the Developer Tools team at Auth0. This team works on improving development workflow through tools and automation. He likes to spend time with family, playing football, or preparing and drinking all possible forms of coffee.

Engineering Manager

Jorge Fatta

Helping engineers stay focused on building features that solve the hard problems of identity for customers.



Auth0 is continuously growing. To share a couple of examples, we just hit a new milestone: [_2.5B+ monthly logins securely authenticated_](https://twitter.com/auth0/status/1101216297206059009) and we [_ended 2018 with a nearly 80 percent increase in both sales and new customers_](https://auth0.com/blog/auth0-closes-year-of-impressive-growth-in-2018/).


We are growing and scaling the organization at a really fast pace, and engineering is no exception. This presents some interesting and fun challenges:

1. Promoting and developing the **culture** that fuels this endeavor.
2. **Hiring** and retaining great engineers.
3. Minimizing duplicate work and time to be **productive** as new people come in.

This blog post is focused on how Auth0 is addressing part of that last challenge; by building a dedicated team to unleash the potential in Auth0 developers to deliver business value with confidence.

## Developer Tools Team at Auth0

In the same way that Auth0's goal is to make identity simple for developers, the Developer Tools team goal is to let our engineers fully focus on development and providing value for our customers. We want to provide the best tools to keep our developers happy and engaged shipping new features instead of struggling every day with exhausting and repetitive tasks that could be automated.

We defined the mindset we want to adopt to develop our tools and outlined a roadmap with the following vision:

> Provide toolchains that Auth0 engineering teams can use to improve their workflow, automate manual tasks, simplify complex processes, and implement a set of company-wide standards.

### What we do

1. Work closely with the engineering teams to understand their pain points, provide tools and guidance.
2. Investigate existing tools and develop new ones to solve their needs:

    * Development Environment tools.
    * Change Management tools.
    * Debugging and Performance tools.
    * Incident Response tools.
    * Work with the [_SRE team_](https://auth0.com/blog/progressive-service-architecture-at-auth0/) to integrate site reliability tools into the platform.

1. Recommended patterns & practices:

    * Identify patterns currently in use across our organization.
    * Provide developer tools for Scaffolding and Code Snippets.
    * Promote the adoption and tooling for the best engineering practices, e.g.: [_contract testing_](https://martinfowler.com/bliki/ContractTest.html).

### What we don’t do

1. While we provide general guidance, we don’t do consultancy, i.e.: we neither do work at a particular team's requests to tackle specific issues, provide advice on demand, or do an investigation by request nor develop customized solutions to solve a specific team's needs.
2. We don’t provide advice or work on particular issues on demand: our tools are developed following a *product* approach.
3. We don’t embed team members on another team to build tooling. We might do it for discovery, but development happens within the Development Tools team.
4. We don’t debug and profile internal services, we provide the toolchain for that.
5. We don’t do [_SRE (Site Reliability Engineering)_](https://auth0.com/blog/progressive-service-architecture-at-auth0/), we might provide tooling that could improve the experience during their analysis.
6. We don’t investigate a random tool or technology on demand. We do it if it is related to reducing developer pain.

<include src="TweetQuote" quoteText="Learn how our engineers stay focused on solving the hard problems of identity for our customers."/>

## Tools Development Mindset

We are approaching the development of the tools as internal **products**, guided by these principles:

1. **Ownership**: We own the tools that we ship, following a “*You Build It, You Run It*” principle.

    * We operate what we build: taking care of the CI/CD, incident response, etc.
    * We take care of not just the coding but also keeping the *product* running in good shape.

1. **Extensibility**: We develop these tools taking extensibility into account from scratch.

    * For example, any engineer should be able to easily extend* *the* CLI *that we provide to interact with Auth0’s local development environment.

1. **Internal Collaboration**: We engage our users to **contribute** with the tool evolution, collecting their feedback and welcoming their contributions to the code and documentation (via pull requests on git repositories).

We aim to follow an **iterative** process to develop our tools (just like our Product Engineering teams), working closely with our internal customers.


> The process adopted by our team suits the lean startup cycle model.

->![Jeff Patton & Associates: lean startup cycle model](https://images.ctfassets.net/23aumh6u8s0i/4TRZnZXwjpgNp5gtf4u168/b8ab189eea4a634cdbadfcf67b5c12be/lean-startup-model)<-

*[*_Lean Startup Model_*](https://www.jpattonassociates.com/common-agile-int-for-startups/lean-startup-model/)* by *[*_Jeff Patton_*](https://www.jpattonassociates.com/) is licensed under [CC BY 2.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/).*

<include src="TweetQuote" quoteText="The Auth0 Developer Tools team shares three key principles to develop a tools-development mindset that helped them create successful internal products for developers."/>

## Our Tools

Some of the tools that we currently maintain and regularly work on had a great impact and adoption rates within the organization but were built prior to adopting the _internal dev tools as product_ mindset mentioned above. It was originally hard for us to *learn *from the tools once released without any kind of usage metrics. For that reason, we focused on existing solutions by:

* Improving **documentation**, both user guides and internal playbooks concisely describing deployment, troubleshooting, and **contribution** guidelines.
* Instrumenting **usage and performance** metrics to **measure** the impact of our iterative improvements.

### Vivaldi

->![Containers on a dock](https://images.ctfassets.net/23aumh6u8s0i/5d1b2HI9Jjwld4HEksBQff/ec3bdb6bf8883d78cf39f907bb6f65bf/containers-on-a-dock)<-

*Photo by *[*_Guillaume Bolduc_*](https://unsplash.com/photos/uBe2mknURG4)* on *[*_Unsplash_*](https://unsplash.com/)*.*


**Vivaldi** is the tool on which we have invested most of our efforts so far. Named after the Italian musical composer, it is a [_Docker_](https://www.docker.com/) container-based development environment that allows engineers to run a local Auth0 on their machine.
Through a command line interface (CLI), Vivaldi provides commands to quickly interact with our service instances running locally in order to:

* Update dependencies.
* Run tests.
* Attach a debugger.
* Run diagnosis tools.
* Execute performance profilers.

->![Vivaldi: Docker container-based development environment](https://images.ctfassets.net/23aumh6u8s0i/1NlLXfq8I0vpBm5KL3cI5l/30cd621072a76bcd0406151786f49246/vivaldi)<-

The initial version of the tool had a **great impact on the development cycle** and was **widely adopted**. Before *Vivaldi*, developers needed to manually spin up the services they were working on, fighting with dependencies with their local environment. Now they can rely on an isolated and replicable environment, being able to spin up the entire services cluster relatively quickly.

As our teams and number of services grow, we are now actively working with teams to better implement a fast development loop without relying too much on running all Auth0 services locally. We are already planning the next generation of Vivaldi, which will support future growth in a scalable way.

### Slack Bots

->![Droid giving you a helping hand](https://images.ctfassets.net/23aumh6u8s0i/H5W70I4X8Ot6NSsj0VHyv/fadc300cf5495e31413a4ef43f2128d7/droid-giving-you-a-helping-hand)<-

*Photo by *[*_Franck V._*](https://unsplash.com/photos/jIBMSMs4_kA)* on *[*_Unsplash_*](https://unsplash.com/)*.*

We developed an internal Slack bot platform called _Gynoid_ during a hackathon and it was quickly adopted by our engineering organization. The platform is customized to satisfy the needs of our developers:

* To build Slack bots easily: just create a JavaScript file, add metadata, and you are done!.
* To install Slack bots straight from a GitHub repository.
* To extend existing bots from different sources: one bot, multiple functions, different repositories.
    * We call these extensions Droids. To install new extensions, we have a Gynoid that serves as a wrapper for this library. Our _Gynoid Droid_ is responsible for registering and extending our bots directly from Slack.

A notable Droid is one that serves as a _concierge_ for any Slack channel, properly named @concierge. It works like this:

* A channel that needs a person on duty to address direct questions invites `@concierge` to the channel.

->![Inviting the concierge Slack bot to a channel](https://images.ctfassets.net/23aumh6u8s0i/762YoyCbXhOlyM9zQAr24/469fe557035293e641012aa2bc03c672/invite-concierge-slack-bot)<-

* A teammate is assigned the role of `@concierge`.

->![Assigning the concierge role to a teammate](https://images.ctfassets.net/23aumh6u8s0i/2u1bJjRFdCbJWf48k9t1Ot/3fb1c5c67e6d6819df21f09564896e18/assign-concierge-slack-bot)<-


* When someone needs to ask anything to a team, for example, they visit the team's channel and ask the question directly to `@concierge`.

->![Asking a question to Slack bot concierge](https://images.ctfassets.net/23aumh6u8s0i/3Gtm4wdoomqbMJas4rzjGf/a1249a2842972eae97cc08b29328a28d/asking-question-concierge)<-

* The teammate with the role of `@concierge` is sent a direct message through Slackbot with the concierge request.

->![Slack bot concierge sending a direct message to teammate](https://images.ctfassets.net/23aumh6u8s0i/4nPgWa3KasUha1YjLcAmos/641263ac54adb338d5906ee7d410673b/concierge-slack-bot-direct-message)<-

* The concierge has now the responsibility to research and to address the request directly. If the request is outside of the scope of the team, the request is redirected to the appropriate channel

The concierge droid helps us avoid unnecessary noise in Slack &mdash; especially since it is widely used within our company as a good substitute for `@here` and `@channel` when asking questions. It's very useful when you have an "on-call" rotation in your team and people need to reach the teammate on call through a Slack channel.

## Roadmap

We are currently working on the next major version of our main tools, focusing on:

* **Scalability improvements**: Vivaldi, our Docker-based development environment, will run an increasing number of services without compromising the developer machine resources.
* **Robustness**: Gynoid, our slack bots platform, will have end-to-end tests and its dependencies will be upgraded to the latest stable versions, allowing our team and contributors from other teams to introduce changes or develop new *droids* with confidence.

Additionally, we’re in the early stages (discovery, viability analysis, and ideation) for a **unified internal CLI** (command-line interface): we already have multiple CLIs that provide different types of functionality. As the number of CLIs keeps growing, it will become hard to keep track of them.

Some teams will decide to use a different tech stack, which may require different runtime dependencies and a distinct CLI to better manage it. However, we could create a unified CLI, customizable and extensible to meet the needs of different tech stacks. Having a unified CLI will help internal toolchains scale while staying maintainable.

## Conclusion

We aim to provide an optimal developer experience, unified across the engineering organization. To do this we take ownership of the toolchains, iterate to improve them and encourage teams to use these tools that have already proven their value on making developers more productive.

We dedicate our Developer Tools team efforts to the discovery, building, maintenance, and promotion of reusable solutions so that the rest of the engineers don’t have to struggle with repetitive tasks, walk through slow development cycles, or constantly switch contexts to take care of maintenance tasks that can be automated.

We want Auth0 engineers to be focused on building new features that solve the hard problems of identity for our customers.

<include src="asides/AboutAuth0" />


Auth0 Internal Dev Tools: Unleashing Engineering Potential

auziros:bobby-johnson

Bobby is a full-stack developer, advocate, and evangelist at Auth0. He is a passionate engineer with an interest in learning and teaching new technologies, using open source software, and engaging the greater software development community. His experience ranges from building line-of-business applications for financial professionals with Russell Investments and Milliman to distributed social content apps with Cheezeburger and Steller.

Developer Advocate Engineer

Bobby Johnson

Learn about the four-year-long journey Auth0 took to deliver the tools needed by both field engineers and our customers to implement last mile identity solutions quickly.



Previously, we wrote about the emerging pattern of [Serverless Extensibility](https://auth0.com/blog/why-is-serverless-extensibility-better-than-webhooks/). Examples of the concept are popping up in many of the services you use daily like [Twilio](https://www.twilio.com/functions) and here at [Auth0](https://auth0.com/). In this post, I will talk about challenges our customers were facing with our Auth0 Identity product, and how this led us down the path toward implementing the [extensibility](https://auth0.com/extensibility) pattern in a variety of features.

## The problem

![NASA Engineers working on MAVEN](https://images.ctfassets.net/23aumh6u8s0i/3KQXnuCX6H4EROaqBq3hRh/e3e24c8007258b4f7b45f0aef852cebd/engineers_working_on_the_high-gain_antenna_of_the_MAVEN_spacecraft)

*Placed into the public domain by [NASA](http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/multimedia/images/?s=1) using [Creative Commons](https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)*

In the early days at Auth0, there were two groups: Core and Field Engineering. Core focused on the core functionality of the authentication product, and the field engineers helped customers use the product in their applications. The company was discovering what customers needed in the product.

Our customers' focus was on the authentication transaction. A lot of interesting features can attach to the process of someone trying to login:

- Profile Enrichment
- Progressive Profiling
- Authorization
- Claims Transformation

Customers will come up with an unlimited supply of feature requests. We could not possibly build every feature at once.

Moreover, sometimes building features into the core product for customers is not the right approach. We needed a way to try ideas out. An idea may sound great, but in practice be problematic. Investing core engineering resources to these ideas is very expensive.

> **"The primary use case for extensibility at Auth0 was to empower field engineers to work on the last mile solutions for the customer without involving core engineering."**<br />
> Eugenio Pace - Co-Founder, CEO

If every interaction with a customer involved identifying an idea, putting it in the backlog and coming back to them at a later date, it would add friction to the process and turn customers away.

For example, we had customers who wanted to do profile enrichment. They used services like [FullContact](https://www.fullcontact.com/) to look up a new user and grab related information about them such as their company, role, and social media accounts. FullContact is just one service as there are several others. We had prospects that were depending on these capabilities to have confidence in using us as a platform, and without it would not become customers.

## Custom code extensibility

![NASA's "Webb-cam" Captures Engineers at Work on Webb at Johnson Space Center](https://images.ctfassets.net/23aumh6u8s0i/6UpPFk1QXmAs5xequW3Wpj/23c899dfcde145fb664480ffddd2cd9f/34827899312_571fa2a976_k)

*[NASA](https://www.flickr.com/photos/gsfc/34827899312) licensed under [Creative Commons 2.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/)*

To solve this problem, we introduced a method of adding custom code into the platform that could be defined by customers. The inspiration for custom code extensibility as a solution came from spreadsheets. Excel has significant functionality out of the box, but you can always add a function, macro or calculation that better reflects your goal. Moreover, you can write them yourself directly in Excel, removing the dependency on Microsoft engineers.

> **"We wanted a similar experience for our users. A user should be able to log in to the dashboard, write a small amount of node.js code that executes later during authorization transactions."**<br />
> Eugenio Pace - Co-Founder, CEO

Like Excel, we wanted to offer users a really simple experience for customizing our product through code. We believed a user should be able to write their logic in an editor, debug it in place, and make it live in production, all without having to stand up a service. This differed from the prevalent approach at the time for dealing with customization through webhooks, which were hosted by the user.

We quickly implemented an MVP to prove out the concept. It created a process boundary between the core Auth0 stack and the customer's code. It primarily prevented well behaved, well-intentioned code from accidentally bringing down the authorization service or other sandboxed code.

Although the MVP had its limitations, it proved that the user experience for customization could be greatly improved, aligning well with our philosophy of "Identity made simple for developers."

## Evolving customization features

![NASA engineers cleaning mirror with carbon dioxide snow](https://images.ctfassets.net/23aumh6u8s0i/2NQmBSwzenRP0r4HFvU0hZ/1b0447fd2fa9bc307d91d3772f94f6c9/17402277412_5e2834517c_k)

*[NASA](https://www.flickr.com/photos/gsfc/17402277412) licensed under [Creative Commons 2.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/)*

Custom code extensibility is exposed in our customer dashboard in three ways: Auth0 Rules, Hooks, and Extensions.

**[Auth0 Rules](https://auth0.com/docs/rules/current)** were the first publically available use case where our customers could easily add custom functionality to their authorization flow directly in the dashboard. Rules execute after authentication but before authorization. We offer a gallery of Rule templates that make it easy for customers to address common scenarios out of the box. Because Rules are code though, customers can easily customize the logic further to meet their specific needs.

A customer clicks a button to add a new Rule, selects one from a set of standard templates which they can customize with a simple editor right in their browser. When saved, the Rule is active on their account for all authentication requests.

![Rules UI](https://images.ctfassets.net/23aumh6u8s0i/A8nlyZBGaECLAhpZ2k9CK/892d84cff88e39e3a51a370ba302964b/rules)

Rules allow you to easily customize and extend Auth0's capabilities. They can be chained together for modular coding and can be turned on and off individually.

Rules were really powerful but were limited only to login. Once customers got a taste of rules, they started to ask us for more places where they can customize the product, and so Hooks were born.

**[Auth0 Hooks](https://auth0.com/docs/hooks)** allow you to customize the behavior of Auth0 using custom code that is executed against several extensibility points. Not only can you introduce customization during the client credentials exchange, but also pre and post user registration. Hooks also take advantage of a more feature rich editor.

![Hooks UI](https://images.ctfassets.net/23aumh6u8s0i/5z6VxLuwFqfKdKRba9vA6W/f63a755d3c63187999e262867c1fdff0/hooks)

While both Auth0 Rules and Hooks give you fine-grained control of the authentication pipeline, **[Auth0 Extensions](https://auth0.com/docs/extensions)** are mini-applications that extend the Auth0 identity product with 3rd party integrations.

They do not directly tie to any specific event in the system. Instead, they can invoke any Auth0 API, can configure the customer tenant, deploy Hooks or Rules on installation and even have an associated user interface. They are extremely powerful and opened up many use cases.

![Extensions UI](https://images.ctfassets.net/23aumh6u8s0i/3z6SONf0xAGkS2UBQavAUL/ce74f139ed89bb283121f9f69abe7482/extensions)

Auth0 Extensions are written using the Webtasks infrastructure. Customers can select an Extension from our gallery and provide a set of configuration options to begin using one.

This is just the beginning. We're constantly looking to enable richer and richer customization in our product, and you'll continue to see us opening new doors as we learn.

## The impact on our sales engineers and customers

![NASA engineers celebrating curiosity](https://images.ctfassets.net/23aumh6u8s0i/5pFHSx1biEJCYLFEKsuh6g/c75c5def4fcb853016d4d68e853ea9e7/celebrating_curiosity)

*Placed into the public domain by [NASA](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Celebrating_Curiosity.jpg) using [Creative Commons](https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)*

Adding extensibility to the identity product opened up a window of customization where field engineers could work independently from core engineering. They could deliver customizations very quickly without waiting weeks or even days, enabling many successful sales engagements.

> **"In some cases, we were able to deliver demos where we implemented feature requests in the demo during the meeting. It was amazing for field engineers and our customers."**<br />
> Eugenio Pace - Co-Founder, CEO

Putting extensibility into the hands of customers also gives us great insights into where the market is going. If we see an extension being implemented again and again through the use of custom code, that is a validation of that feature and an opportunity to add in the core product.

Multi-Factor Authentication came about this way. MFA was not a switch on the dashboard initially. It was merely a rule you applied to your account. Over time, our customers' usage of this rule indicated MFA was an important feature to have in the core product.

For more examples, take a look at our [rules repository](https://github.com/auth0/rules) on Github. Every single one comes from a real-world customer use case.

> **"Every event in the life cycle of the user can be expressed through code and in that way we can support any backend out there in a flash. No matter how customers encrypt or hash passwords; whatever they do is supported because they can provide the details using custom code."**<br />
> Sandrino Di Mattia - Engineering Lead

## The impact on our business

![Happy Employees](https://images.ctfassets.net/23aumh6u8s0i/3tb9Pbddo96TUGVZMxu68U/39443eb09615ed15655b82f45bc54862/culture-2)

Not only did we make our customers happier, opening up customization provided us a direct return on revenue. Looking at our data, we found our customer retention increased up to 10x for those users that took advantage of customizing. Not only that, but our largest deals depend on these customizations even today, bringing 70% of our cloud revenue.

## Summary
In the past four years, we've been exploring how to better enable our users to customize and extend our SaaS. On our journey, we discovered the Serverless Extensibility pattern provided a great solution. We found that allowing extensions to be authored in-line provided tremendous value both to our customers and to the business. It allowed us to close more deals and deliver customer features much more quickly and cheaply than before. 

_I would like to thank [Eugenio Pace](https://twitter.com/eugenio_pace), [Sandrino Di Mattia](https://twitter.com/sandrinodm) and [Tomasz Janczuk](https://twitter.com/tjanczuk) for taking time out of their busy schedules to be interviewed for this post._

<include src="asides/AboutAuth0" />


Our Journey toward SaaS Customization and Extensibility at Auth0

andrew-akers

I'm a product marketing manager who loves learning about technology, information security, and identity. My goal is to turn that knowledge into positive outcomes for our customers. Before Auth0, I was a product marketing manager at Cisco in the network security division. In my spare time, you can find me spending time with my family, reading, writing, and working on endless home improvement projects.

Product Marketing Manager

Andrew Akers

Learn how strong identity gets your customer into the game quicker.



Developing video games is a lengthy and expensive process. An old rule of thumb is a game costs roughly [$10,000 per person per month](https://kotaku.com/why-video-games-cost-so-much-to-make-1818508211) to develop. Of course, video game economics are [far more complex than that](https://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/RaphKoster/20180117/313211/The_cost_of_games.php), but all of the statistics point to a simple truth: game development is expensive, and the longer a game is in development, the more it costs.

To boost profitability, many games turned to microtransactions. [For example, Grand Theft Auto V has generated more than $500 million in microtransaction revenue](https://www.gamespot.com/articles/gta-5s-online-mode-has-generated-half-a-billion-do/1100-6438765/), and [the uber-popular Fortnite made $300 million in one month off of microtransactions.](https://www.theverge.com/2018/5/24/17390004/fortnite-battle-royale-money-made-revenue-300-million-april-2018) However, these models require a strong method of managing and verifying customer identity to ensure a user has access to only what they've paid for and to prevent [account takeover and fraudulent charges.](https://auth0.com/blog/secure-your-gaming-company-with-auth0-fraud-protection/)



## Why Identity is important — and difficult

Most game developers aren't experts in identity and access management because it doesn't contribute directly to the bottom line. It is simply the cost of doing business. And making mistakes when it comes to identity management can be quite costly. It can create unwieldy, complex systems that must be maintained or else customers cannot log in. At worst, missing critical elements of identity management can lead to data breaches, fraud, and account theft -- all of which can have a drastic negative impact on profits.

However, when done right, identity can also have a positive impact on the business. [Social Logins](https://auth0.com/learn/social-login/) can help players quicker and easier. [Universal Login](https://auth0.com/universal-login) can make it easier to manage identity and push updates across multiple games or applications.

Perhaps most important is multi-factor authentication (MFA). Account takeovers can cause a lot of headaches for players and companies alike. In the worst-case scenarios, an attacker could take over a high-value account and get it banned through fraudulent charges or cheating, or even steal enough personal data to take over the customer's entire digital identity. This hurts the paying customer, and can lead to bad publicity and consumer sentiment.

Look closely at gamer forums and you'll find numerous posts asking for MFA. [Here is one for League of Legends](https://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/help-support/towOk4R8-is-there-a-way-to-activate-two-step-verification-for-my-account), which sees more than 80 million players each month. Epic Games offers MFA to its[  78.3 million Fortnite players](https://www.polygon.com/fortnite/2018/9/20/17884036/how-many-fortnite-monthly-players-2018) and even[  incentivizes it with a free emote.](https://techcrunch.com/2018/08/23/fortnite-players-can-unlock-a-new-emote-if-they-enable-two-factor-authentication/)

## Auth0 takes the complexity out of Identity

By outsourcing your Identity needs to Auth0, [you can see as much as $11.7 million in total benefits, including up to 548 percent return on investment.](https://auth0.com/forrester-total-economic-impact/) Auth0 provides a universal Identity as a Service (IDaaS) platform for web, mobile, and legacy applications. NVIDIA used Auth0 to get[  "100 percent" of their focus back into building value services for their developers.](https://auth0.com/learn/nvidia-sees-100-developer-focus-returned-auth0/)

Auth0 can be implemented in nearly any environment, regardless of programming language or technology stack. With more than[  65 SDKs and pre-configured Quickstarts](https://auth0.com/docs/libraries), you can rapidly deploy Auth0 in your cloud, Auth0 cloud, or hybrid environment. It can work side-by-side with your existing Identity provider or migrate users over to Auth0.

You can easily enable a variety of Identity features with Auth0. With a simple toggle, [you can enable social login](https://auth0.com/learn/social-login/) -- we support more than 30 providers. You can quickly implement [Universal Login](https://auth0.com/universal-login) across your various applications and management portals.

Auth0 can easily enable [multi-factor authentication](https://auth0.com/multifactor-authentication). Use the Guardian iOS or Android app to receive push notifications, get one-time codes delivered via SMS, or connect with a third party token generation app such as Google Authenticator.

And for an extra layer of security, enable [Anomaly Detection](https://auth0.com/docs/anomaly-detection) to prevent brute force attacks or identify accounts involved in third-party breaches. Additionally, you can use Auth0 rules to [help prevent fraudulent account activity.](https://auth0.com/blog/secure-your-gaming-company-with-auth0-fraud-protection/)

<include src="asides/AboutAuth0" />


Game Dev - Make Identity Easier and Quicker with Auth0

Amazon Web Services customers can now implement Auth0’s Universal Identity Platform to build and scale new applications quickly



**BELLEVUE, Wash., – January 14, 2019 –** [Auth0](https://auth0.com/) today announced the public availability of its Identity-as-a-Service (IDaaS) platform on [AWS Marketplace](https://aws.amazon.com/marketplace/pp/B07YH11JH6). Customers can now add the cost of an Auth0 Enterprise Subscription to their Amazon Web Services (AWS) bill, and gain fast, flexible access to cloud-based identity management.

Auth0 is also an Advanced Technology Partner in the [AWS Partner Network (APN)](https://aws.amazon.com/partners/), which allows it to be hosted on or integrated with AWS. APN Advanced Technology Partners have demonstrated their commitment to AWS and deliver unique value to its customers. Auth0 will also take advantage of APN’s many benefits and framework for growth within AWS Marketplace, including technical training opportunities, business growth, and sales/marketing enablement. 

Auth0’s availability on AWS Marketplace makes it even more accessible to developers who need an extensible identity solution for new applications. Auth0 is quick to implement and easy for AWS customers to purchase, so developers can easily get new applications up-and-running. An Enterprise Subscription to Auth0’s highly scalable identity platform includes: Custom Domains, Unlimited Social Identity Providers, Unlimited Enterprise Identity Providers, HIPAA/BAA compliance, Single Sign On, and many other features.   
“Working with AWS offers us a powerful opportunity to continue expanding the global reach of our Universal Identity Platform,” said Eric Snyder, Senior Director of Partners at Auth0. “Enterprises can focus on innovation and achieve faster time-to-value by outsourcing their identity management to Auth0 for any audience, whether customers, business partners, employees, or even machines.”

For more information on the Auth0 Enterprise Subscription, please visit: [https://aws.amazon.com/marketplace/pp/B07YH11JH6](https://aws.amazon.com/marketplace/pp/B07YH11JH6).

<include src="asides/AboutAuth0" />

## **Media Contacts:**
Jeana Tahnk<br/>
Corporate Communications<br/>
Auth0<br/>
[jeana.tahnk@auth0.com](mailto:jeana.tahnk@auth0.com)

Kasia Hall<br/>
Matter for Auth0<br/>
[khall@matternow.com](mailto:khall@matternow.com)<br/>
971-246-7898


Auth0 Now Available on AWS Marketplace

jenny-obrien

I'm a former business journalist who's fascinated by the intersection of tech and business strategy — in particular how the right solution can transform an idea into reality. I specialize in ROI, data privacy, and identity.

Business Content Manager

Jenny O'Brien

How Customer Success Architect Julian Lywood-Mulcock applies music to identity challenges.



![Auth0 Customer Success Architect Julian Lywood-Mulcock playing piano](https://images.ctfassets.net/23aumh6u8s0i/71DTBXKWgjXX30VSLht5Yb/5bc0ee47d477b221be6ed8e1405ed4fc/auth0-meet-the-experts-julian-lywood-mulcock)

Playing flute, violin, and piano gave Customer Success Architect [Julian Lywood-Mulcock](https://www.linkedin.com/in/julianwilliam/) a thorough understanding of how each player comes together to form an orchestra. Although his soloist career never brought him his big break, it did lead him to obtain a Ph.D. from [Durham University](https://www.dur.ac.uk/) in machine creativity by using music as a vehicle of interaction between himself and an AI.

During a long stint at Accenture, Julian worked on challenging identity problems for businesses across the UK and Europe, until a customer need for [passwordless authentication](https://auth0.com/passwordless) confirmed his interest in working at Auth0.

<include src="TweetQuote" quoteText="Think you might need professional services help with your identity solution. Auth0 Customer Service Architect-EMEA @jlnwlm shares the questions you need to ask."/>

We sat down with Julian to talk about how his musical background informs his work with customers, why you need to solve identity first in any AI scenario, and how he helps customers work through identity pros and cons.

**On how Julian’s musical background informs his understanding of system architecture**: 

People talk about music being very much like mathematics. I think there's an element of truth in that. There's always patterns and there's always something within it that makes it music. Designing system architectures is very much like music. You're dictating your orchestra, and that orchestra in this context just happens to be a lot of systems or a particular application.

**On why identity should be the first consideration in any AI scenario**:

If your business is looking at using AI services, get your identity services in check first. Because if you don't, you're going to have a hell of a problem trying to get an understanding of your customers and also your AI understanding your customers, too.

**On why he sticks with identity**:

There's a pattern in music called an antecedent and a consequent. An antecedent is like your call, and your consequent is your response — very much a dialog, which is how I like to think of identity. The challenge is making sure everyone (or everything) knows who (or what) it’s talking to — identity is an integral part of having a dialog between at least two parties. 
I've stuck with identity because I enjoy clarifying that dialogue. 

**On why identity matters**:

I think one of the core reasons is that our customers want to understand who their customers are.
 
Identity is integral in the B2C domain because our customers need to understand their customers: who they are and what they want so they can better communicate with them, provide personalized experiences, and customize their products. From a marketing perspective, this allows our customers to be more accurate in what they provide to their customers.

In the other domains, like the B2B domain and the B2E domain, where marketing personalized experiences are lower priority, giving end-users easy access to systems with a single set of credentials is immensely powerful, making secure and reportable use of systems a click of the 'Sign In' button.

**On what’s in Julian’s toolkit when he works with customers**:

* Security comes first. How do I mitigate as much risk as I can for this customer's customers? 
* You have to be quite confident in knowing that what you're saying: hey, here's the best practice, and this is why. 
* Understanding who's in the room. Am I speaking to a business owner? Am I speaking to a developer? That is absolutely integral to success because there is no point talking to a business stakeholder about access tokens because they're just going to switch off. 
* Knowing that you can't possibly know everything there is to know about identity — you have to want to learn. And you need to want to apply your knowledge.

**On working with Auth0’s Professional Services Team**:

One of the best parts of working with the professional services team is the breadth of understanding of everybody within it.

**On what Julian can do at Auth0 Professional Services that he can’t do at another company**: 

Deliver. It's the ability to deliver an end-to-end solution, which enables our customers to offload identity services and focus their resources on other priorities. Plus, the satisfaction of knowing that millions of people worldwide are using our services.

**On the most intriguing customer problems Julian faces regularly**: 

* Creating a single identity for multiple brands — we can create very specific tenants for customers and link that either to a database that they already have or we can link that to a master tenant, as it were, which is kind of a big tenant that ties everything together. There are many different ways of doing it, and all of them have their pros and cons. And then it's a business decision.

* Data Migrations — If you're moving identities, that means you've got to [move secure information from one place to another](https://auth0.com/docs/migrations). And if you don't have the capability to move that securely, then that means that customer is going to need to reset the password if you move them. Auth0’s lazy migration process means that our customers can move their passwords and that whole identity across from wherever it is right now into Auth0 in as secure a manner as possible, mitigating as much risk as possible. 

* Passwordless — You do not need to store passwords. What we're saying by using passwordless is actually using other methods to verify that you are the person you say you are. This mitigates password breaches because you simply don't have passwords to breach. However, one of the problems is that it blows customers’ minds when you talk to them about this. Very often the user experience teams are most against passwordless experiences, because they have highly customized flows that are dependent upon the whole sign in: you enter a username/password, then you do this, then you do that. From a UX perspective, passwordless could be perceived to break that very familiar pattern. Again, it's a pros/cons case. "Here's what we can do, here's what we can't do, and here's how it's going to benefit you as a business."

**On how modularizing helped solve a customer’s digital transformation challenges**: 

We had a customer who is going through a major, major, major digital transformation. They're moving two different platforms. One is their identity platform. That's us. And the other is their bookings platform. 

They've got millions and millions of users all around Europe. In terms of what they have today, which is a legacy architecture that cannot be unpicked in any timely or logical way. We provided the ability to migrate all of their users (without having to reset their passwords!), and the identity services those users sign in with, in one deployment. This is a leap for them, and was a core component of why Auth0 is their partner. We continue to deliver improvements to their identity services with milestones set for introducing Social Login, and bringing in federated B2B services to their booking platform.

**On what the customer gets out of a whiteboarding session**: 

Confidence in us. Customers want to know how long a solution is going to take. And nine times out of 10 our time to market raises eyebrows because it's that quick.

**On the value of a providing security-focused opinion regardless of whether or not customers follow Auth0’s advice**:

There is not one person that I have met or engaged with at Auth0 where the mitigation of risk is not a priority.

I had a customer very recently ask me about how frictionless we can make a particular experience. And we went through some of the patterns they had already documented. We took it back and we reviewed it in the office, and I just went, "Hold on a second. Is this really what they're asking?" So we realized that there was this massive security hole in what they'd asked us to do. Knowing there is a large expansion opportunity with this customer, I told them, "You are seriously putting your end users at risk." That also puts our expansion opportunity at risk. 

But I know that it's my job to make sure those end users are secure.

**On advice for customers considering professional services**: 

Ask yourself how you’re managing identity today. If the answer is "I’m not sure" or 
"Well, we've got this here and we've got that there, and sometimes we do this, and sometimes… And isn't there somebody over in that department that does that?" Please reach out. We can help.

<include src="TweetQuote" quoteText="Find out how modularizing helped solve one major customer’s identity challenges and other advice from Auth0 Customer Service Architect-EMEA @jlnwlm."/>


Meet the Experts: Julian Lywood-Mulcock

Customer identity and management technology helps utilities reshape how they interact with users, improve their services, and tighten security.



Utility companies are in a unique position because of the sheer amount of data they collect and the number of users they manage. This affords them opportunities to generate value in ways that other companies can't.

But this wealth of information comes with several challenges. Users have [high expectations that many utility companies have yet to meet](https://www.powerengineeringint.com/articles/print/volume-26/issue-1/features/three-challenges-for-utilities-in-2018.html), and the [prevalence of inefficient customer management systems](https://www.appcues.com/blog/3-customer-engagement-strategies-that-make-users-feel-like-one-in-a-million) leaves many teams vulnerable to service outages and even cyberattacks.

Using customer identity and access management (CIAM) technology can help utility companies avoid three of the industry’s most common issues:

1.  Inefficient trouble-shooting
2.  A lack of personalized service
3.  Security

Instead of tackling each with a separate set of tools and processes, a CIAM approach offers a single way to improve all three.

## 1. Quickly Fix Customer Access and Use Issues With a Central Dashboard.

Many utility companies have [decentralized and poorly planned processses](https://www.nccoe.nist.gov/sites/default/files/library/sp1800/es-idam-nist-sp1800-2a-draft.pdf) to let users access their power platform. Without a clearly defined system, utilities are more likely to feel the burden of service interruptions and suffer longer and more expensive delays in resolving them.

This can also make it difficult to help users in real time both with larger issues, such as power outages, and with simple fixes, such as password resets. Disorganization can diminish customer satisfaction and threaten a company's reputation in the industry as well as its ability to manage a large volume of users, obstructing productivity, and growth.

For companies looking to avoid these issues, a central dashboard can help [consolidate previously disparate streams of information](https://auth0.com/user-management) within an organization. In addition, if it's high quality, this product can, at any given moment, show which customers are logged in and provide their locations and current behavior.

![Central utility customer dashboard consolidates information streams](https://images.ctfassets.net/23aumh6u8s0i/4GgUoZRC73okir7MpR0W1w/7a588a02e3dac5fbf20311b66064e487/central-dashboard-consolidates-information-streams)

A robust dashboard will offer several ways to visualize the information, such as with a heat map of logins, along with pictures and users' personal details to help verify and learn more about them.

### Make Password Resets More Efficient

Internet users average [37 password resets a year](https://blog.dashlane.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/MailboxSecurity_infographic_EN_final1.jpg). Without an efficient process to tackle these, a simple fix can become frustrating and time-consuming. For utilities, a dashboard is an easy way for system admins to connect directly with end users on tasks like these.

In addition to greater overall user management, a dashboard allows admins to create a specific [password-reset page](https://auth0.com/docs/hosted-pages/password-reset), which they can tailor to their company's specific needs:

![Hosted login page for better password management](https://images.ctfassets.net/23aumh6u8s0i/5pvz5OyXVoS4npg1snIKE6/e27fe6683509cfc5c07518645ee91dd9/hosted-login-page-for-better-password-management)

The tool will enable users to change their passwords independently, without the added burden of IT support. It also allows a company to maintain consistency in the appearance of all associated pages—from login through password reset and more.

This approach can also help a team track the number of password resets happening at any given moment or determine how frequently specific users are requesting resets, helping admins identify and solve larger problems, including suspicious behavior.

## 2. Get to know your customers.

Many believe that [utilities are falling short in meeting customer needs](https://www.publicpower.org/periodical/article/utilities-missing-out-personalized-marketing-opportunities). As many [startups push the bar higher for customer success](https://www.forbes.com/sites/matthunckler/2017/08/23/the-top-3-strategies-for-customer-success-for-high-growth-tech-startups/#73ff49206805), a strong CIAM system can help buck the stereotype that established utilities aren’t innovative.

Being able to understand and meet the expectations of your customers is critical to [customer retention](https://www.appcues.com/blog/proven-customer-retention-strategies). CIAM technology will help you paint a fuller picture of each customer. In addition to incorporating data on their logins, devices, and utility usage, you can you can use [progressive profiling](https://auth0.com/blog/progressive-profiling/) to pull details like their location and their email addresses and even the interests they indicated at the login stage.

![Utility customer progressive profiling flow](https://images.ctfassets.net/23aumh6u8s0i/35XPMAPBa8EcYYET3tFRWI/44496d8d82c815206fbe3d512475805d/progressive-profiling-flow)

With a more comprehensive collection of data, teams can proactively match the right users to the right promotions. It can help organizations develop new services, boost engagement, and avoid being branded as a company that sends irrelevant spam messages and push notifications.

## 3. Block Suspicious Behavior.

On top of helping utility companies better understand and anticipate customer needs, a secure CIAM setup is crucial in an [industry facing an increase in cyber threats](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-04-04/cyberattack-bleeds-into-utility-space-as-duke-sees-billing-delay).

A recent IBM report found that the [average cost of a data breach for a utility company](https://www.ibm.com/blogs/insights-on-business/energy-and-utilities/security-breach-energy-utilities/) was approximately $3.5 million per incident in 2016. For companies based in the United States, that number jumped to an estimated $7.4 million, and just this year, an [American power company was fined an unprecedented $2.7 million](https://www.bankinfosecurity.com/us-power-company-fined-27-million-over-data-exposure-a-10715) for leaving customer records publicly exposed for 70 days.

CIAM offers simple but effective solutions that can help you quickly respond to suspicious behavior in your system and prevent a breach. Features like [anomaly detection](https://auth0.com/docs/anomaly-detection) will instantly block users with unknown addresses or repeated failed login attempts.

Not knowing who is in your system or what information they are accessing can cause more than just fines and lawsuits: Without a strong user-management system, companies are forced to inefficiently use IT resources and even take systems off-line while searching for the source of a breach. On top of losing money, these interruptions in service can draw even more attention to your failure to secure user data.

## Consolidating customer data will shape the future of utilities

The utilities industry is set to experience major shifts in the coming years thanks to new technologies and energy sources. As competition increases, companies that embrace strong access and identity technology will emerge as leaders that avoid costly mistakes and create deeper connections with their customers.

<include src="asides/AboutAuth0" />


How Utilities Can Use CIAM to Avoid 3 Common Problems

Insurers know that digital transformation is coming. To stand out from your peers, adopt identity and access management for a secure experience that customers can trust.



<div class="alert alert-info alert-icon">
  <i class="icon-budicon-500"></i>
  <strong>Forrester Consulting analysis determines that using Auth0 can yield a 548% ROI and $3.7M in identity-related savings. Read the full report: <a href="https://resources.auth0.com/forrester-tei-research-case-study/">Total Economic Impact of Auth0</a>.</strong>
</div>

---


Insurers know that implementing digital changes have the potential to benefit them long term. A recent [McKinsey study](https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/digital-mckinsey/our-insights/making-digital-strategy-a-reality-in-insurance) found that insurers that digitized their processes eliminated 30 to 50 percent of the human service costs. The top quartile of those surveyed achieved 2X the growth of their peers.

<include src="TweetQuote" quoteText="Insurers know that digital transformation is coming. To stand out from your peers, create a secure experience that customers enjoy and trust."/>

But specific obstacles in the industry have stalled progress. First, the majority of insurers don't have the in-house technical expertise and equipment to make sweeping changes without support. In addition, many are concerned, particularly in an era of [increased scrutiny around customer data](https://auth0.com/blog/cambridge-analytica-and-facebook/), that a system overhaul could threaten measures they've already taken to protect sensitive information.

Despite these real challenges, customers increasingly expect cutting-edge solutions. Other industries, like [healthcare](https://auth0.com/healthcare/) and [financial services](https://auth0.com/financial-services), are quickly incorporating digital methods, raising the bar for everyone. Eventually, insurers will be forced to change. Early adopters will gain an edge, and those who are slow to transform will lose.

While it's possible to begin a digital transformation in many ways — from creating a new claims platform to simply delivering online quotes — starting with an identity and access management (IAM) strategy is a clear, easy-to-implement step that allows managers to attack several core functions at once.

## Legacy Systems in a Changing Environment

In industries such as [retail](https://auth0.com/retail), many teams are able to rely on consumer data pulled from public sources like [social media profiles](https://auth0.com/learn/social-login/) to underpin their strategies. This might include compiling current and potential customer interests, events they've attended, and pages they've liked. In insurance, it's more complicated. Agents work with higher-touch information sets, like health records and credit scores.

![Legacy, old insurance systems example](https://images.ctfassets.net/23aumh6u8s0i/1T3qVEXkTfn8vpmFRHZyqX/35117cf6090d3668e1aacab3d062734a/legacy-systems-struggle-to-keep-up-with-digital-transformation)

[Source: Electronic Medical Records & Electronic Health Records Software](http://www.emr-ehrs.com/mental-health-electronic-health-records.php)

This data is the foundation for building customer risk profiles, determining premiums, and completing claims. Most teams have developed processes over decades that continue to work well. Although a lot of this data exists on legacy insurance softwares and systems and may not be intuitive for new hires to find and work with, more-seasoned agents understand the process and don't feel an urgent need to change.

With such fixed methods, it can be challenging to know why and how to begin to make updates. Tweaking any aspect of an established insurance company's model, even something as simple as market research or reaching out to new prospects, could skew the whole.

Yet if teams don't start somewhere, they risk becoming irrelevant in markets that are quickly evolving. Home insurers, for example, are facing variables such as interconnected home security and heating systems, like the Google Nest; auto insurers are having to factor in autonomous vehicles and the changes that ride-sharing programs like Uber and Lyft bring; even health insurers are seeing stiff competition from newcomers, like Oscar, that have a strong focus on UX and more-affordable plans.

Just because many insurance teams have succeeded with business-as-usual for decades, it doesn't mean they don't need to revamp for the future.

## Organize Your Users for Greater Security and Efficiency

For insurance teams facing a daunting set of changes, developing a clear [identity and access management - IAM](https://auth0.com/app-modernization) modernization strategy of legacy softwares is a concrete first step. IAM is a simple, initial fix that can form the basis for more updates down the line. It is a single solution for organizing and tracking customers, employees, and even business partners who are working with critical data in your system.

IAM often begins with a portal that collects, organizes, and protects customer data at the login stage. This starts with a simple welcome screen on the front end:

![Customer acquisition starts with a secured, basic identity management](https://images.ctfassets.net/23aumh6u8s0i/6skPK5VXzplAOaOIG2mXAW/d4cc7731371771ffcd5576d3fcf99044/transforming-customer-acquisition-starts-with-a-basic-identity-management-strategy)

Behind this screen, the technology tracks customer logins and platform behavior and enriches their profiles with personal details and historical records. This can be information that the insurer manually uploads or automatically pulls from public sources. Some features also include additional options, such as [progressive profiling](https://auth0.com/blog/how-profile-enrichment-and-progressive-profiling-can-boost-your-marketing/), to help build customer data over time (e.g., location, age, and gender).

For administrators, certain features allow for a bird's-eye view of all users in a given system, noting growth in users over time, ratio of new to returning users, who is accessing what levels of information at any time– even what device(s) they're using:

![Customer data visualization in Auth0 reports allows for better reporting and analytics](https://images.ctfassets.net/23aumh6u8s0i/5iw0moRjxmuV8bvOeZ9t16/e39d7192b9ca429b294a43df722dd491/organizing-customer-data-in-a-single-location-allows-for-better-reporting-and-analytics)

Organizing customer data in a single location allows for better tracking, heightened security, and the possibility of gaining sharper insights on customer histories and current behavior. This approach will make your company more efficient at building risk profiles, communicating with customers in a more personalized way (particularly if and when they are in distress and need to make a claim), and understanding your target audience at a granular level.

<include src="TweetQuote" quoteText="Organizing customer data in a single location allows for better tracking, heightened security, and the possibility of gaining sharper insights."/>

## Outsourcing IAM to the Experts

While you can try to update your IAM system on your own, most insurers don't have the in-house capacity to do so — at least not at the level needed to meet future needs. This would require building a portal that is a one-stop solution for all users — yet is still flexible enough evolve alongside your business. The advantage of outsourcing IAM is having a dedicated team of experts whose entire job, 24/7, is to build and deliver these solutions — as opposed to adding it to a pile of tasks your IT team is currently balancing.

A provider like Auth0 makes sure all of its [features adhere to the highest industry standards](https://auth0.com/security), including LDAP, SAML, OAuth, OpenID, OpenID Connect, and JSON Web Tokens (JWTs). In addition, it is GDPR, EU-US Privacy Shield, and HIPAA compliant.

![Auth0 compliance and certifications](https://images.ctfassets.net/23aumh6u8s0i/35nsnoblygw4XlOUwuocQ6/c02f2b95ba00c2410da392fe049e68c4/auth0-adheres-to-the-highest-industry-standards)

[Source](https://auth0.com/security">Auth0 Security)

This eliminates the need for your team to do additional research to ensure any changes are up to code in your geographic area or industry.

Top-notch identity and access management providers like Auth0 will offer even more tools, like 2FA options, to help ease the customer experience. These features can provide a clear measure of safety that customers will immediately appreciate. Each step along the way allows your team to move further away from lagging competitors by gaining user trust, invigorating your brand, and creating more-efficient internal processes.

## Be an Early Adopter

If you're an insurer, now is the time to make bold changes to your current strategy. The early digital adopters in the industry will gain sharper insights and win and retain more customers.

No teams will be able to hide from change. With new products constantly coming to market, the industries in which insurance teams operate are themselves being revolutionized. Taking the first step to develop and implement a tight IAM system will open the door for full digital change.

<include src="asides/AboutAuth0" />


How the Right IAM Tools Will Help Insurance Teams Make the Shift to Digital

Newest partners in the U.S. and EMEA extend its Universal Identity Platform to more customers.



**BELLEVUE, Wash. -- July 16, 2018 --** [Auth0](https://auth0.com), a global leader in Identity-as-a-Service (IDaaS), today announced significant expansion in its [Partner Program](https://auth0.com/partners), adding several notable Solutions and Technology Partners to its global network. More companies in the U.S., Europe, and South Africa can leverage Auth0’s Universal Identity Platform, thanks to the global growth of the Auth0 Partner Program. 

Due to the demand that solutions integrators, resellers, cloud providers, and digital consultants have for an end-to-end identity and access management (IAM) platform that can handle any use case, for any audience, the Auth0 Partner Program has experienced 150 percent growth in number of partners since last year. The most recent additions to its program include: 

* [My Life Digital](https://www.mylifedigital.co.uk/): Developers of Consentric, a unique cloud-based consent and permissions platform (United Kingdom)
* [729 Solutions](https://729solutions.com/): One of the oldest custom development and design agencies (San Francisco)
* [Pandera Labs](http://www.panderalabs.com/): Consultancy focused on innovative digital experiences (Chicago)
* [Iron Cove Solutions](https://ironcovesolutions.com/technology/):  Leading cloud security and implementation firm (Los Angeles)
* [Houston Inc.](https://www.houston-inc.com/): Customized digital services integrator (Finland) 
* [I Am App](https://iam-app.co/#home): Implementation partner and software reseller (South Africa)

“Using Auth0 with our growing customer base has accelerated our development by incorporating a fantastic identity platform into our service offering,” said Simon Crossley, Director of Engineering, My Life Digital. “After evaluating different solutions, Auth0 is the best fit for our engineering needs and provides a comprehensive and secure identity solution that is essential for our services that manage personal data.”


The Auth0 Partner Program provides the tools and support needed to enable its partners to be successful with the industry’s most extensible and powerful identity platform. Expanding their offering with secure identity management, a critical component of any digital initiative, not only extends their value proposition and deepens customer relations, but also opens new opportunities and provides an incremental revenue stream. 

“Identity is becoming a foundational piece for any strategic project, big or small, and we are pleased to provide our partners with that elemental piece of the puzzle,” said Eric Snyder, Senior Director of Partners at Auth0. “We rely on our valuable partners to extend the reach of our platform, and are excited to broaden our exposure to more regions, thanks to the great new companies that have joined our program.”

Learn more about the [Auth0 Partner Program](https://auth0.com/partners). Interested in joining the program? Reach a member of our [Partner Success team](https://auth0.com/partners#become-a-partner).

<include src="asides/AboutAuth0" />

### **Media Contact:**

Jeana Tahnk<br>
Corporate Communications<br>
Auth0<br>
[jeana.tahnk@auth0.com](mailto:jeana.tahnk@auth0.com)

Kasia Hall<br>
Matter for Auth0<br>
[khall@matternow.com](mailto:khall@matternow.com)<br>
971-246-7898


Auth0 Expands Reach of Global Partner Program

Tips for a secure and organized data migration process. 1. Workflow and project management tools 2. User identity and access management 3. Clear customer communication



Data is the foundation of a company's success. It provides the basis for customer insights, corporate strategy, and operational efficiency. As more companies embark on [digital transformation](https://auth0.com/app-modernization), migrating this critical information — particularly sensitive customer data — to a new platform(s) can be a burden. Moving data can unearth inaccuracies, unknowns, and/or duplicate entries, making it insufficient to use and requiring significant changes. 

The tips below will help ensure that the movement of your most sensitive information is secure, organized, and accessible to your users.

<include src="TweetQuote" quoteText="Data is the foundation of a company's success. This post will help ensure that the movement of your most sensitive information is secure, organized, and accessible to your users!"/>

---

## Issues That Can Arise with Data Migration
Before we dig into strategies for success, it's important to understand the issues that can arise in data migration. The process can be thorny for several reasons.

### Lack of Consideration for the Process
Teams are generally focused on selecting and configuring their new system. Testing potential tools and comparing the models are generally more exciting and inspiring than the mechanics of lifting data out of the legacy package. If data is uploaded in its current state, any errors or irrelevant aspects could become amplified and increase the information's exposure to risk. Because of this, it's important to be sure your team is on the same page about the nuances of the process and has a specific roadmap marked with individual roles and responsibilities.

### Improperly Tracking Users
It's critical to manage user identities and monitor for suspicious activity when you're migrating sensitive information. Companies that rely on consumer data, in particular, must validate all entries against new regulations — [GDPR](https://auth0.com/docs/compliance/gdpr/features-aiding-compliance/protect-user-data), for example, along with more specialized industry standards such as Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) for financial institutions and the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) for many healthcare providers.

### Poor Communication of Updates
Making sure your end users understand how you are securing their data after you've updated your apps is important for maintaining their trust. If you can't articulate what you are doing with their information, it's unlikely they will stick around. Documenting your work and developing a clear communication strategy are essential to making sure your data migration supports your company's overall goals for growth.

To address these potential issues, the following strategies focus on workflow, user access, and communications.

<include src="ebook-ads/UserMigrationYourWay" />

## 1. Organize Your Workflow and Project Management
To clearly understand and outline the steps required for a successful data migration, take time to consider the following:

- What will cause the least disruption to the daily operations of your system? That is, when are the best times to work on and/or migrate data sets of highest sensitivity or usage?
- What aspects of your strategy can you tag to teammates in-house, and where might you need to bring in outside expertise?
- How will you document your process, ensuring that all information is accounted for?
- Will you enrich your files after they have been moved with further information (e.g., customer names and/or account numbers)?

While this list is not exhaustive and each strategy will be unique, depending on an organization's current systems and future goals, it should aid in understanding the depth of thought required for an efficient data migration.

It can be helpful to use a workflow tool to organize your team and define your process. [Airtable](https://airtable.com/product) has a proven track record for improving internal organization. When mapping out your data migration strategy, Airtable can help define your project scope, set deadlines, and assign individual responsibilities.

For any task that you're organizing, Airtable will help prioritize tasks and ensure that you adhere to your overall goals:

![Airtable](https://images.ctfassets.net/23aumh6u8s0i/38brOxQrTQvBu8Pa8BBQ17/df355af7ec95291c2abff6758ccb9694/1-airtable)

> [Source.](https://airtable.com/product)

Within the grid view, you can check to see which tasks have been completed and quickly note whom to reach out to in case of a question or concern. Airtable also has a [calendar view](https://airtable.com/product) to better visualize the timeline of your data migration, which can quickly become lengthy and arduous without clear monitoring. Both views can help break down the potentially opaque data migration process into a concrete series of steps.

Additional tools to consider for managing the task of data migration include:

- [Asana](https://asana.com/guide/examples/company/project-management): Highly customizable, popular tool for engineering teams
- [Trello](https://trello.com/): Visual workflow; bulletin-board format
- [Jira](https://www.atlassian.com/software/jira): Supports distributed collaboration

Taking time to think through your steps at a granular level and selecting a tool that will hold your team accountable will help you succeed.

## 2. Clearly Track Who Accesses Customer Data
Understanding who is accessing and updating portions of sensitive customer data at any given time during the data migration process is critical to maintaining integrity. In today's environment of [increasing industry regulations](https://auth0.com/gdpr) around consumer data, this core function must be up-to-date and as tight as possible. 

Because of the complexity and urgency of this task, many teams choose to outsource their [identity management](https://auth0.com/app-modernization) when migrating data, particularly as part of a larger [digital transformation](https://auth0.com/learn/identity-management-drives-digital-transformation/).

[Auth0's user management dashboard](https://auth0.com/b2e-identity-management-for-employees) allows a systems administrator to authorize new users, track their behaviors, and evaluate their performance according to the company's policies.

![Auth0 Dashboard](https://images.ctfassets.net/23aumh6u8s0i/5IwuLEHPTS1w1q7UhTcUPk/277cb0224267a945a4265e0984263142/2-auth0-manage)

> [Source.](https://auth0.com/learn/cloud-identity-access-management/)

In the Auth0 dashboard, an administrator will have a clear view of users at any point. In addition, Auth0's identity platform offers enhanced options like multi-factor authentication, anomaly detection, and advanced logging. For example, if the administrator notices a certain user has a series of failed login attempts, they can [block access](https://auth0.com/docs/anomaly-detection) to investigate further. 

From a user perspective, this function is an invisible and painless part of their workflow. 

## 3. Explain Your Data Policy Changes
If you can clearly communicate your data migration and updated data usage policies to your users, you will gain their trust — and an edge over your competitors. At the moment, very few company blogs or statements spell out the details of data usage in a digestible format — as we've recently seen with Facebook's [confusing policies](https://www.wired.com/story/mark-zuckerberg-congress-day-one/). 

You have an enormous opportunity to distinguish yourself in the field if you can fill this information gap. A major data migration is a perfect opportunity for you to document previous work and latest updates. Making this information immediately visible, user-friendly, and clearly accessible is key:

![Facebook](https://images.ctfassets.net/23aumh6u8s0i/7mn6vdZtybE6e5Rlg1dSNa/10c9a53747ac05ec8598251b03153990/3-zuck)

> [Source.](https://www.recode.net/2018/3/28/17171496/facebook-settings-redesign-cambridge-analytica)

While hopefully your team will not be recovering from a data leak like [Facebook's](https://auth0.com/blog/cambridge-analytica-and-facebook/), the tech titan provides an excellent example of how to communicate a change in policy to users. Three key points to include when explaining your updates are:

1. Place a brief summary of the information on the front of the app where users will see it immediately without any digging.
2. Include a clear CTA or way in which users can click to read further details.
3. Make sure any actions your user must take to delete or update their data settings are very simple.

You must make your user feel as though they are well supported and in full control. Both sets of information — your summary and fine print — should feel friendly and encouraging. Employ your best writers and incorporate welcoming images or a set of bullet points to truly put your best foot forward.

## Don't Be Afraid to Change
[90%](https://auth0.com/learn/how-auth0-uses-identity-industry-standards/) of businesses today state that legacy software systems are keeping them from achieving their goals. Despite increasingly strict regulations, you should not be afraid to scale and innovate. Just be sure you take the process of data migration seriously as you search for your new platform. Make sure the right people access the correct pieces of data at the proper times during the migration and then seize the opportunity to demonstrate how bulletproof your new strategy is with excellent customer communications.

<include src="TweetQuote" quoteText="90% of businesses state that legacy software are keeping them from achieving their goals. Scale and innovate while paying attention to data migration to succeed!"/>


Three Strategies to Streamline Your Data Migration Process

Identiverse 2018 recap: Focus on Customer Identity and Access Management (CIAM) for developers + Solutions Review interview with Vittorio Bertocci (video).



We had a blast at [Identiverse 2018](https://identiverse.com/) (formerly Cloud Identity Summit) in Boston last week and we had an amazing new booth specially designed for this event. The energy at the world’s largest gathering of identity professionals was inspiring. 

<p style="text-align: center;">
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/2-roRnqW3Jw?rel=0" frameborder="0" allow="autoplay; encrypted-media" allowfullscreen></iframe>
</p>

There was a definite trend towards 'Customer Identity' (identity solutions for application developers), says [Auth0 Head of Content and Guidance Mike Fitzbaxter](https://twitter.com/mikefitzbaxter). "This was in contrast to the normal Enterprise-centric Identity solutions which are predominantly showcased at these events. It was an exciting justification of Auth0's product vision.”

## Solutions Review: Vittorio on Open Standards in Identity

[Solutions Review’s Doug Atkinson](https://solutionsreview.com/author/solutions/) caught up with [Auth0 Principal Architect Vittorio Bertocci](https://auth0.com/blog/auth0-welcomes-vittorio-bertocci/) at the conference. They spoke about Vittorio’s recent move from Microsoft to Auth0 and the need for open standards in identity.

<p style="text-align: center;">
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/-coC5zusfRc?rel=0" frameborder="0" allow="autoplay; encrypted-media" allowfullscreen></iframe>
</p>

<include src="TweetQuote" quoteText="Check out @vibronet’s #Identiverse 2018 interview with @Solution_Review on his move to @auth0 and open standards in identity + our conference recap!"/>

## Wide Range of Identity Challenges, 5 Auth0 Sessions

In addition to discussing a wide range of identity challenges at our booth (biometrics for login, 500 legacy apps that needed to migrate quickly to a new framework, and wanting to add second-factor authentication to existing mobile apps), Auth0 offered 5 sessions, including one with our customer ATB Financial:

Beyond API Authorization ([Jared Hanson](https://twitter.com/jaredhanson))

The Critical Role of Identity in CX for ATB Financial ([Martin Lapointe](https://www.linkedin.com/in/martin-lapointe-633ba050/))

The Wheel, Reinvented. Or not. ([Mike Fitzbaxter](https://twitter.com/mikefitzbaxter))

Auth0 Masterclass: Architecture & Identity: 3 IAM Examples to Support Digital Transformation (Jared Hanson)

Auth0 Masterclass:The Curse of Knowledge: Designing a Developer-Friendly IdaaS ([Vittorio Bertocci](https://twitter.com/vibronet))

## What About the Hack the Code Contest?

Over 400 Identiverse attendees tried to [Hack the Code](https://auth0.com/blog/auth0-is-going-to-identiverse-2018/) to get into the Auth0 safe and claim the $5K Amazon gift card. Our most tried codes were 0000, 9999, 1234, and 2018 — typical codes that people use, but also an example of why you should avoid using those common options. To improve their chances, people also wanted to know who set the code and whether it was random or had a specific meaning.

The winning Auth0 code was actually a compilation of two random numbers chosen by two Auth0 employees: 4743. 

In the end, it took a trio of colleagues to crack the code working a winning strategy that combined logic and luck with a little social engineering. Due to a request from their employer that they decline an interview and reveal neither their place of business nor their professions, we are only able to identify our winners by their first names, but we can share how they hacked the code!

On day one, each member of the trio tried random numbers. They could tell from watching Auth0 employees very closely that Joseph had to be close to the right number. 

Aware that a lot conversation was happening at the Auth0 booth as attendees tried to hack the code, the trio remained close at hand, listening for possible clues. When day two came and went without the safe opening for them or for any other attendees, they took their social engineering strategy to the conference floor. 

The trio talked up other conference attendees who had attempted to hack the code and decided that it was highly likely that the sequence relied on a repeated number, but the third day of attempts didn’t open the safe.

<include src="TweetQuote" quoteText="Find out how a trio worked together to hack the @auth0 code at #Identiverse 2018!"/>

On the fourth day of the conference, they agreed to try again, with the three numbers they thought were correct, but with each of them repeating a different number fourth. Neither Brett nor Merrel cracked the code, but on the last try, Joseph entered the right sequence. The green light went on. The safe opened and the crowd went wild! 

Since they had already joked about how they split money if they won, Joseph, having opened the safe received $2,000 Brett and Merrel each took home $1,500. We congratulate them on their successful strategy!

## How Big was that Conference?

Thanks to everyone who helped make this conference possible. We can’t wait for next year! To get a sense of the scale of this conference, please check out the [official Identiverse compilation video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XG4zesTtpkM&feature=youtu.be) (and watch for Auth0). We hope to see you there next year!


<include src="asides/AboutAuth0" />


Strong Emphasis on ‘Customer Identity’ at Identiverse 2018

A strong CIAM system can help you modernize in a quicker, more organized fashion.



The shift to the cloud is accelerating. Teams of all sizes, including giants like Microsoft, IBM and SAP, are racing to catch up (as we just saw with [SAP's enormous recent acquisition of Qualtrics](https://techcrunch.com/2018/11/11/sap-agrees-to-buy-qualtrics-for-8b-in-cash-just-before-the-survey-software-companys-ipo/?utm_medium=TCnewsletter)).

Every company wants to become faster, smarter, more nimble, and more secure. The best place to begin improvements is with your customer relations. A strong customer identity and access management (CIAM) strategy can be the cornerstone of a team's success. It helps you organize your sensitive customer data in a single place, which ensures you're [compliant with current regulations](https://auth0.com/gdpr). It can also help you form a more creative and targeted strategy moving forward.

Moreover, if you're going through a [digital transformation](https://auth0.com/app-modernization), maintaining continuous customer engagement throughout this challenging process can help keep sales on track.

### What a CIAM solution allows you to do:

- Create a single view of your customers from disparate pieces of data.
- Reduce customer churn with frictionless registration.
- Stay safe in an environment with rising cybercrime.

We dig into these three benefits below and highlight how Auth0's customer identity and access management tools can help you achieve your goals.

## 1. Why customer identity and access management is the first step in single view.

[Single view](https://auth0.com/blog/the-three-best-ways-to-create-the-single-vision-of-a-customer/) is becoming the norm for teams that wish to stay competitive. While this is especially clear among [retail and media companies](https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/digital-mckinsey/our-insights/the-case-for-digital-reinvention), it's highly relevant for all customer-facing teams. Catering to customers requires an in-depth knowledge of their interests and behaviors.

Outsourced CIAM providers like Auth0 are able to create an extensive profile for each user in a company's system, which tracks and manages their logins and devices along with their purchase histories.

![Building rich customer profiles, a single view with a CIAM system](https://images.ctfassets.net/23aumh6u8s0i/okSReaVDL4OSDzKC20Kiv/db01bde2e4bfef2b6c5eb85f8b7000fa/logins)

Auth0 facilitates the collection of customer data from all available public sources that combine into a comprehensive picture that you can use to underpin more targeted marketing materials, communications, and product rollouts. Knowing that Maggie Smith is 23, for example, will ensure you don't try to push products for aging on her. You can focus instead on developing a relationship, based on her [millennial interests](https://adespresso.com/blog/marketing-to-millennials/).

If your company opts for [social login](https://auth0.com/learn/social-login/), this profile will also pull Maggie's specific interests from the social providers you choose for authentication.

![Auth0 Social Connections social login providers](https://images.ctfassets.net/23aumh6u8s0i/1GL2CgoClEfkZ9vAfOtAzf/e399ae270682e494910d30fe93126883/sociallogins)

If a user opts to log in from multiple sources (e.g., both Facebook and Google), your team can link these accounts back together, integrating both sets of information.

A single, detailed view of each of your customers is an excellent starting point for [integrating this rich information into your CRM](https://clearbit.com/enrichment) and making more calculated decisions — such as tailoring which pieces of content your users see. Matching articles and/or advertisements to your audience's specific likes, interests, and histories can give them a more personalized experience on your platform and ensure you stay a step ahead of the competition.

## 2. How frictionless registration keeps customers engaged.

Customer retention is an enormous concern for teams today — particularly when the cost of switching among products and services is low, and product reviews and complaints are ubiquitous, along with nearly every other piece of information about your company via social media and a constant stream of news.

Yet there's still an enormous opportunity to shine and create a better experience for your users in this environment. Many companies still struggle with [bad login UX](https://auth0.com/blog/bad-login-experiences/). Users often have to refresh tabs several times just to access a homepage. They quickly lose interest if they have to recover a password more than once. A CIAM strategy that encompasses [passwordless methods](https://auth0.com/passwordless), however, can ensure success:

![Screen showing different passwordless authentication methods with Magic Link selected](https://images.ctfassets.net/23aumh6u8s0i/4y4Kb6Sx3JEwxEGaxTR5xU/49137e92bae8c15bfe3c48b1a35eeacb/magic-link)

SMS, magic link, and Touch ID are three tools Auth0 uses to help its customers ensure a smooth set-up process.

- SMS involves users entering just their phone number to sign up.
- Magic link relies on just an email address.
- Touch ID uses your unique thumbprint.

In addition to simplifying sign-ups, these three solutions contribute to a consistent user experience after an account is created, supporting a higher level of engagement with a company's suite of products and/or services over the long term.

Finally, passwordless authentication can also help mitigate the insecure practice of users recycling the same password for several accounts when a password reset procedure is triggered. This feature is [easy to implement](https://auth0.com/docs/connections/passwordless/faq) with a robust provider like Auth0.

## 3. How an outsourced customer identity and access management provider can help you secure sensitive data.

In addition to being a cornerstone of your team's growth strategy, an impenetrable CIAM setup can help ensure the data of your users is safe from cyberthreats.

Several studies show that [data breaches are on the rise](https://auth0.com/blog/what-is-a-data-breach/). According to [Dark Reading](https://www.darkreading.com/vulnerabilities---threats/2018-on-track-to-be-one-of-the-worst-ever-for-data-breaches/d/d-id/1333252), 2018 is set to be one of the worst years in history for data breaches, with more than 3,600 reported breaches and over 3 billion records exposed. While no tool can 100% guarantee the safety of user data, CIAM mitigates the risk of your company shelling out for fines and lawsuits in the short term and potentially losing its good standing in the long term.

Users will appreciate your implementation of [multi-factor authentication](https://auth0.com/docs/multifactor-authentication) (MFA), for example — i.e., relying on additional sets of information, such as SMS codes, fingerprints, or voice recognition to gain access.

![Multi-Factor MFA authentication on different mobile and watch devices](https://images.ctfassets.net/23aumh6u8s0i/2846ymlXupGms7lqbpSaPh/f227b6ab55a465a5b3138bff54bae3e7/mfadevices)

Auth0 Guardian can make the process of switching to MFA simple. In fact, it even makes MFA itself easier by allowing immediate approvals or denials a login attempt — from a desktop or mobile device (including Android Wear or an Apple Watch).

MFA has a strong success rate for keeping cyberthieves out—largely because it avoids reliance on passwords. A 2017 study found that breached passwords were responsible for [81%](https://www.cso.com.au/mediareleases/29642/hacked-passwords-cause-81-of-data-breaches/) of data breaches (up from 66% in 2016).

Tracking and securing your customer data is essential to maintaining integrity; however, if you're processing any data of EU citizens, it is also critical for complying with _[GDPR](https://auth0.com/gdpr)_. With fines for non-compliance being [up to €20 million or 4% of the global annual revenue](https://auth0.com/gdpr) (whichever is greater) — even if your team is an industry leader, the financial and reputational costs of thieves stealing this sensitive information could be a hard recovery.

## Go beyond customer identity and access management: think platform identity and access management

Many companies have yet to make the investment to modernize — regardless of industry. Consumer packaged goods and automotive companies, for example, lag furthest behind — only completing 31% and 32% of the digital shift they need, according to [recent research from McKinsey](https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/digital-mckinsey/our-insights/the-case-for-digital-reinvention).

The separation between those that have made the right updates and those who haven't is stark: as digitization sweeps through all industries, McKinsey finds that companies in the top quartile of modernization will [capture disproportionate gains](https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/digital-mckinsey/our-insights/the-case-for-digital-reinvention), while those in the bottom quartile will see increasingly depressed revenue and profit growth. The gap will continue to widen.

CIAM can help ensure your team is a leader within its peer group by improving your interactions with customers.

While customer identity and access management is a critical component of a digital shift, it cannot solve all of your organization’s needs. Companies must consider B2B, B2E and IoT use case scenarios as well. A combination of CIAM with B2B or B2E use cases, in particular, can help you achieve and maintain an industry-leading position.


"customer identity"