IDENTITY &
PRIVACY
SOFTWARE
MARKETS

Consumer Identity and Access Management (CIAM)

Consumer Identity and Access Management (CIAM) is one of the fastest growing software industries in the world. Website owners all around the world are under pressure from new government regulations and growing consumer expectations for better privacy and more trust.

In just a few years, these twin pressures have helped to create new markets for software solutions that support global privacy, automated consent, third-party risk, reporting for ESG (environment, social and governance) and regulatory compliance.

Hundreds of millions of websites simultaneously operating in hundreds of jurisdictions around the world use CIAM software to manage their interactions with customers and website visitors. The result has been increased costs for business and friction for consumers, often without solving the trust problem.

Trust is the new currency of the digital economy

Global consumers are increasingly concerned about how their privacy and data are managed. Trust in digital privacy is at an all-time low. According to a 2020 McKinsey survey, only the financial and health sectors achieved a 44% data trust rating. In other words, a remarkable 56% of consumers do not trust these sectors to protect consumer ccb and data. The pharmaceutical sector has a 22% trust rating. Energy, retail, telcom, consumer goods, media and entertainment and travel sectors all range from 10% to less than 20% of consumers that trust companies in these various sectors.

The scale of consumer data exposed in large scale IT breaches is described by experts as “staggering”. New regulations such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in Europe and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) are designed to safeguard against abuse. In November 2020, Canada introduced new federal privacy legislation, Bill C-11, that, if adopted, will create one of the strictest data protection regimes in the world, accompanied by some of the most severe financial penalties, rivalling the standards in Europe and California. Companies with a connection to Canada will need to build the new federal law, and applicable provincial laws, into their global compliance strategy. Despite these regulations—which notably institute stiff fines and penalties for non-compliance—too many organizations have become dependent on treating consumers as if their private information is a resource to be mined or harvested without the full consent of their customers.

Identity management problems rooted in conventional CIAM are exposing consumers to new risks in the interactive digital economy. We are entering a new digital era with Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR) and the new endlessly extensible Metaverse beckoning consumers to create virtual identities and to become 3D avatars and virtual humans. Soon, the current problem plaguing the existing model for privacy and data management will expand exponentially as consumers begin to use their virtualized identities to shop, play, socialize and work inside these new interactive digital environments. These problems are so persistent that some, such as Andreessen Horowitz, have predicted that a new identity system must be created to support the future of a burgeoning Metaverse digital economy.