CIAM vs IAM: What SaaS Companies Need for Enterprise Customers

The Okta Businesses at Work 2024 report highlights the distinction between Customer Identity and Access Management (CIAM) and Identity and Access Management (IAM), emphasizing their roles in managing external and internal identities, respectively. CIAM focuses on authenticating and managing customer identities, often at a massive scale, prioritizing user experience, consent, and signup conversion, while IAM is concerned with the internal workforce, aiming for least-privilege access and lifecycle governance. For B2B SaaS companies, the need is typically for B2B CIAM with enterprise Single Sign-On (SSO) and SCIM provisioning, allowing their enterprise customers to integrate their own Identity Provider (IdP) to manage employee access. The report underscores the importance of enterprise SSO in closing business deals, as security teams often require seamless integration with existing identity systems. The text also discusses the technical protocols involved, such as SAML 2.0 for SSO and SCIM for provisioning, and the challenges and benefits of building versus buying identity management solutions.

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