Building an in-house system to manage customer and third-party usernames and passwords may seem straightforward, but in practice may be an unexpectedly difficult task fraught with security risks. As a result, organizations are increasingly turning to customer identity and access management (CIAM) solutions to help increase performance and scalability with less effort and expense. While enterprises are turning to commercial CIAM solutions, IT and cybersecurity leaders are facing issues as they evaluate their CIAM options.

To get insight into identity security trends, ESG surveyed 488 senior IT and cybersecurity decision makers at large midmarket (i.e., 500 to 999 employees) and enterprise (i.e., 1,000 or more employees) organizations across North America (US and Canada). These respondents were responsible for their organization’s identity and access management programs, projects, processes, solutions/platforms, and services.