What is B2B CIAM (and How is it Changing the IAM Landscape)?

Johann Nallathamby—Director of Solutions Architecture at WSO2 and current head of Solutions Architecture for IAM—explains what B2B CIAM is, how it’s affecting the broader IAM landscape, and how it can help companies improve their business. This article originally appeared in Insight Jam, an enterprise IT community that enables human conversation on AI.

For any organization that interacts with others in almost any capacity, managing access to their applications and software is a problem domain that requires specific and dedicated solutions. This is known as B2B CIAM, or Business-to-Business Customer Identity and Access Management. When an organization’s customer is a consumer, this is known as B2C CIAM. When the customer is another business, this is known as B2B CIAM.

While similar to other identity and access management solutions, like those for enterprises or business-to-consumer relationships, B2B CIAM has its own needs and use cases. Namely, the development, operations, management, and governance of B2B SaaS (Software as a Service) applications require their own solutions.

A company building SaaS applications requires an IAM backbone to onboard and manage identities and ensure security for services and resources. Any number of third-party users, including enterprise customers, channel partners, dealers, distributors, resellers, and vendors, will require secure access to the SaaS application, and streamlining that process is key to business development.

How B2B CIAM Can Elevate Businesses

To explain why it is important to differentiate B2B CIAM from other existing identity and access management solutions, we can look at the specific capabilities of B2B CIAM.

For Developers

It is essential to ensure that developers are empowered to work as efficiently as possible when building a SaaS application portfolio through a streamlined, “Single Sign-On” approach to SaaS identity management. Where some IAM vendors choose to build their access policies around distinct applications, creating isolated pockets of policy governance within an organization, the more successful B2B applications look to the more unified “organization-centric” approach that centralizes SaaS identity management and policy governance.

A B2B CIAM system can also create hierarchical management of the organization, with a built-in tenancy that allows for logical and customizable compartmentalization of enterprises. A well-designed access solution can streamline the onboarding process for resellers and their customers, allowing for an organized and easily governed application. Within this framework, access delegation can be implemented, with users and brokers acting on behalf of customers. This facilitates better security and organization and can be customized to best fit the business or third-party users.

All this compounds into an easily navigated ecosystem within each organization, facilitating smooth collaboration. Consumers and providers all have appropriate access to shared resources, making distribution and management simple. Integrated tools within the CIAM solution provide visual and low-code editors, templates for workflows and integrations, software development kits, and CI/CD (continuous integration and continuous delivery/deployment) that help streamline every step of the development process.

For Customers

For the customers, all of these benefits are tangible, but it goes even further. The customization and hierarchical organization of a B2B CIAM solution allowed for the delegation of user lifecycle management, entitlement management, and discretionary access. An organization can onboard and manage its own sub-tenants and users, manage user roles for applications and APIs, and allow users to act on behalf of customers. Businesses can also collaborate and create the perfect level of access to shared resources without risking security.

Log-in options can vary from business to business, with various SSO, social log-in, and MFA options. These allow users to personalize their log-ins to fit with their other applications and needs while governing the “level of assurance” that good security mandates. Like the authentication options, there are simple paths to create branding around the log-in, shaping appearance at every consumer touchpoint.

All of the customer customization is self-service and does not require complicated development, making the process faster and reducing the time spent creating the perfect personalized access point.

For Digital Transformation

Since most companies use SaaS applications, smooth integration is a must. B2B CIAM solutions transform an organization’s internal processes by working with systems like CRM (customer relationship management), subscription services, marketing automation, and customer data platforms. The integration allows for the smooth automation of workflows like onboarding and sending customers between applications within an organization.

The B2B CIAM system can also govern access to application subscriptions and API portfolios, allowing and disallowing access to applications based on loyalty or subscription level. Whereas other solutions may be less permissive of individual settings like this, the B2B CIAM system can facilitate many different levels of customization.

All of this can be managed through a single dashboard, which provides audits and insights for both the main organization and its users. This can be useful for tracking subscriptions, log-ins, users, the most used applications, and anything else the organization may need to learn.

What are the Challenges in Securing B2B SaaS Application Access? 

While we have discussed the specific capabilities necessary for B2B SaaS organizations, we have not shown what existing IAM solutions lack. Issues can arise when integrating organizations, and these can prohibit the use of less comprehensive IAM solutions.

• Onboarding: A unique issue to B2B CIAM, onboarding requires processes and intuitive APIs to bring other organizations into a new SaaS system.
• Reducing Friction: With potentially hundreds of organizations and hundreds of thousands of individual identities that can be as distant as customers of customers, access has to be as streamlined as possible and, ideally, self-service.
• Supporting Diverse Go-to-Market Models: Organizations using the software can have all kinds of GTM strategies, so the solution has to be accessible to organizations that act as intermediaries, resellers, distributors, or in any other capacity and be able to manage the relationships among these different roles of organizations.
• Appointing Designated Custodians: Organizations using the software may want to appoint either individuals or groups of users within their organization or other organizations themselves as custodians for organizations based on the organizational relationships, so custodial access must be an option.
• Regulatory Compliance: When dealing with external identities and third-party organizations, privacy regulations and security compliance must be stringent to protect users from fraud and false log-ins.
• Reducing Operational Costs: To keep costs low, providing as much self-service as possible is crucial. This means customers should be able to navigate most processes independently and reserve contacting the service provider to solve more complicated issues.
• Increasing Developer Productivity: Providing the best possible tools and IAM plumbing allows developers to work at their highest capacity to build and operate applications, ensuring they have the necessary information to troubleshoot and recover quickly if there are any issues.

B2B CIAM Has Its Own Needs

As we can see, operating a B2B SaaS presents unique challenges that other IAM solutions are not yet well-equipped for. The complicated nature of integrating entire organizations rather than individuals into an application is not to be understated, and developing tools designed around streamlining this process ensures that the needs of businesses are met within the software. The specific design of a B2B CIAM allows for better personalization, hierarchical access, and customized workflows that facilitate strong security and effective branding, all while making the lives of developers, customers, providers, and custodians easier.