Redefining identity & access management to successfully achieve your digital transformation– Key takeaways from Gartner’s experts

December 29, 2016

According to Gartner, 2017 will be the year when identity proofing and authentication and fraud detection converge. This was one of the main themes reviewed during the 2016 edition of the annual Gartner Identity Access & Management Summit.

A key distinction clearly made during the conference was that of the existing one between the Customer Identity and Access Management (CIAM) and the Enterprise Identity & Access Management (IAM).

CIAM is a foundational component of digital transformation strategy. CIAM’s tools enable the digital customer journey through seamless registration, authentication, profile management and consent management capabilities. Within this framework, identity proofing is the first step.

Concerns about KBA and the need to provide a seamless identity verification experience, central points at Gartner’s IAM 2016 Summit

Although the need for higher convergence of identity proofing and authentication to strengthen fraud detection took central stage in this year’s edition, other topics had the industry talking:

Gartner calls out the industry's doubts about the current in-person identity verification 

  • In today’s digital environment, providing an outstanding customer experience from the very first moment – that of identity proofing – is paramount to achieve success with the digital transformation of the business.
  • In-person identity verification is still unreliable – as branch staff, tellers, agents and other employees lack specific professional training to spot suspicious or fraudulent identity documents, integrating mobile capture and digital ID document authentication solutions such as Mitek’s Mobile Verify offer great potential for enhanced certainty. Adding technology for ID document verification to your assisted service, in the branch, the store or at community events, will result in safer onboarding, and overall, a better, faster, experience for employees and customers.
  • Generating trust between consumers and businesses remains a key problem across industries and geographies. Furthermore, it’s capital for financial institutions and other businesses operating in highly regulated markets to address this initial lack of trust in the early stages of the customer journey. "Identity can't do all the security, but it can reduce the attack surface." said Gregg Kreizman, research vice president at Gartner, during the event.
  • Rapid growth in instances and sophistication of data breaches and cyberattacks reinforce existing doubts about the value of ‘knowledge based authentication’ or KBA. This hesitation to rely on ‘what you know’ type of passwords and security questions becomes especially acute when dealing with highly valuable customers such as Millennials or international expats, which traditionally have thin credit files. In this regard, Kreizman cited a Gartner survey that showed 63% of their clients said they would be replacing one or more identity technologies in the next two years. “The No. 1 reason was that the technology environment has changed and the incumbent solution does not meet our requirements," said Kreizman.
  • Meanwhile, the recent explosion of biometric-driven ID verification and authentication initiatives has reinforced the need for identification, even before other methods of authentication such as biometrics, are enabled.