The value of Bring Your Own Identity

New research shows that both the lines of business and IT departments see value in Bring Your Own Identity (BYOID) initiatives, where social networking or digital IDs are used for application login. The groups also agree that more security is needed to increase BYOID adoption.

“In today’s application-driven economy, access to applications has to be simple and secure. BYOID is an increasingly popular option for simplifying access. It can reduce the need to create new accounts for every site, which leads to registration fatigue and abandoned shopping carts,” said Mike Denning, senior vice president and general manager, Security, CA Technologies. “We are working to make sure we enhance BYOID security without adding friction or complexity.”

BYOID deployment using social IDs is still in its infancy, but interest is high, especially for mobile and web customer populations. There is a high level of interest in BYOID and using social identities such as Facebook, LinkedIn or Yahoo, with 50 percent of IT and 63 percent of business users expressing high or very high interest.

Customers engaging with the business via the Web and mobile device were highest rated for targeted digital identity engagement, eclipsing other populations such as job recruits, employees, contractors and retirees.

Identity is now viewed as a contributing growth asset as well as a security component. Both IT and business users agreed that an important reason for BYOID adoption in their organization was to achieve a stronger identity credential and get a higher level of confidence that a user is who he says he is (69 percent and 65 percent respectively). But business users cited capturing attributes about users as the biggest benefit (95 percent).

This indicates an evolving view of identity. No longer viewed as simply a component for protecting data, identity is now seen as a value asset that can provide data which could drive incremental revenue and help maintain customers.

Additional security developments could drive increased BYOID adoption. The majority of IT and Business users said “identity validation processes” would help increase BYOID adoption (72 percent and 70 percent respectively). Implementing fraud risk engines also rated among the top three across both groups. Interestingly only 27 percent of business respondents believed formal accreditation of the identity provider was very important / essential, while 59 percent of IT users believe formal accreditation is very important / essential.

Respondents’ preferred identity provider varied based on the situation and region. When asked what social ID was of most interest to their organization, IT users ranked PayPal as the preferred identity provider across all regions. Business user responses varied with Amazon edging out PayPal and Microsoft. When asked what social ID respondents preferred as a consumer, Google was highest ranked among both IT users and business users.

“A holistic examination of the attitudes uncovered in the research show two clear views of identity,” said Dr. Larry Ponemon, chairman and founder, Ponemon Institute. “IT continues to take a traditional risk-based, security view of dealing with identities, while the business side takes a more value-based, customer-centric view of identity. In order to gain the most value from any BYOID initiative, these two groups must collaborate and become allies for secure business growth.”

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