State of CIAM in Asia-Pacific 2022

As digital services pervade every corner of our lives, fuelled by the impact of the pandemic, businesses in Asia-Pacific are accelerating their efforts to deliver better digital experiences to their customers.

To meet rising expectations, these experiences must be seamless, secure, and brought to market as quickly as possible. As a result, organisations of all sizes are turning to customer identity & access management (CIAM) solutions. CIAM allows businesses to embed a secure identity layer into their consumer and SaaS applications, facilitating secure, seamless end user experiences across digital channels. It also ensures partners, suppliers and contractors have access to the right resources, first time, empowering them to collaborate effectively.

But building this identity layer can be complex and time-consuming. It can divert developers’ time away from their core task of creating, enhancing and maintaining products, and delay time to market for critical app releases. If implemented poorly, the risks are high: clunky authentication flows can frustrate customers and drive them to abandon their baskets at checkout. A flawed security posture increases the risk of a breach, leading to lack of user trust and adversely impacting customer stickiness and lifetime value.

CIAM is key to protecting an organisation’s digital front door. So, how widespread is its implementation – and how are businesses going about it?

Our research shows high awareness of CIAM across Asia-Pacific, along with an appreciation of its importance to an organisation’s security strategy. Businesses recognise that customer experience will be the key differentiator in future and, despite the perceived complexity of CIAM, view it as critical to building customer loyalty, improving collaboration with partners and suppliers, and unlocking revenue growth.

Methodology

Okta engaged the research firm Statista to conduct this survey online between 28 February and 4 March 2022. The survey questioned 320 employees in South Korea, Hong Kong, Singapore, Philippines, Australia and Japan, in roles including C-level positions, IT and engineering managers and directors, enterprise architects, compliance managers, directors of digital and developers. It aimed to find out to what extent companies in Asia-Pacific are prioritising CIAM, how widely it is being implemented, and the main motivating factors driving adoption.