CIAM (Customer Identity and Access Management)

A system that manages how customers prove who they are and what they can access across all of a company's digital products, not just at signup.

It is the layer behind the "sign up," "log in," and "my account" screens, and it keeps those experiences consistent across a company's websites and apps.

A software category combining identity verification, authentication, authorization, and profile management into a single system, handling the full customer identity lifecycle from registration through every subsequent login and permission change.

A customer identity system typically covers these functions:

• Registration and onboarding, which creates accounts and can include identity verification.
• Authentication, which supports passwords, passkeys, multi-factor authentication, and single sign-on across products.
• Authorization, which decides what each customer can access.
• Profile and consent management, which stores customer details and records the permissions they give.

Customer identity and access management (CIAM) differs from its workforce counterpart in who it serves:

• Workforce identity and access management (IAM) manages employees and contractors, usually in the thousands, with accounts an administrator assigns.
• CIAM manages customers, often in the millions, who sign up on their own and expect a fast, polished experience.

CIAM sits next to terms that are easy to mix up:

• Authentication is one function inside CIAM.
• Authorization is another function inside CIAM.
• Digital identity is the data and credentials that represent a customer, which CIAM manages.