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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.

The report, ‘The Identity Imperative for the Open Enterprise 2014’, conducted by the Ponemon Institute and CA Technologies, examines business user and IT department attitudes toward BYOID.

Ugan Naidoo, head of security at CA Southern Africa.

“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,” says Ugan Naidoo, head of security at CA Southern Africa. “We are working to make sure we enhance BYOID security without adding friction or complexity.”

The report provided several key insights into BYOID, including the current state of adoption, its perceived value and views toward the identity providers and how BYOID could be enhanced.

Current state

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% of IT and 63% 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.

Perceived value

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 organisation was to achieve a stronger identity credential and get a higher level of confidence that a user is who he says he is (69% and 65% respectively). But business users cited capturing attributes about users as the biggest benefit (95%). 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.

Enhancing BYOID

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% and 70% respectively). Implementing fraud risk engines also rated among the top three across both groups. Interestingly only 27% of business respondents believed formal accreditation of the identity provider was very important / essential, while 59% of IT users believe formal accreditation is very important / essential.

Perception of identity providers

Respondents’ preferred identity provider varied based on the situation and region. When asked what social ID was of most interest to their organisation, 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.

“An 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.”

“Enabling and protecting the open enterprise is the mantra of today’s application economy. Identity is the new security perimeter that makes this possible. CA is dedicated to providing the market with the solutions needed to accelerate the delivery of secure, new applications, and help ensure access to the right users on their devices. This ultimately translates into driving business growth, which is good news for the SA economy,” concludes Naidoo.

A BYOID infographic is available at www.securitysa.com/*infographic1 (short URl to http://www.ca.com/us/~/media/Files/infographics/a-three-legged-race-are-businesses-and-it-getting-off-on-the-wrong-foot-with-byoid.PDF).

The report can be downloaded at www.security sa.com/*CA1 (short URl to https://www.ca.com/us/register/forms/collateral/ponemon-institute-research-report.aspx).

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