Broken Authentication Threatened Customer Relationships
Perch Security started out with a Java-based, open-source IAM solution, which was set up by some of the company’s founding engineers. The problem was, once those engineers left, nobody on the team had the Java expertise to work with the system. Finally, it began to occasionally crash for hours at a time. According to Nick Hagianis, Perch’s VP of software development, “As we grew and got higher-value customers on the platform, it wasn’t really an acceptable option to have downtime for a security system that’s supposed to be 24/7, 365.”
“The scary part was not knowing how long it would take to get back up,” Hagianis says. “It became a serious business risk for us.” It was clear that Perch needed a change. Says Hagianis, “We had to migrate off that system and get onto something that was easier to manage. Something that our developers were actually familiar with and could work with.”
While Perch’s team was looking at more stable open-source options, they found Auth0. “We had a couple of developers who had used Auth0 on side projects before, and they found the developer experience to be very pleasant and easy to use, easy to implement.” They decided to experiment with Auth0’s platform and signed up for a free account. One developer made a proof of concept over the weekend, and it was an immediate hit. “We thought it would be a huge business win for us,” Hagianis says.
“We had a couple of developers who had used Auth0 on side projects before, and they found the developer experience to be very pleasant and easy to use, easy to implement... We thought it would be a huge business win for us.”

Nick HagianisVP of Software Development