Identity and Access Management (IAM), or simply identity management, refers to a service or platform that identifies individuals and controls their access to system resources through user rights and restrictions. Identity management is important for security and increases the productivity of users by implementing a central directory: users don’t need to remember and keep track of several different usernames and passwords. IAM also helps protect companies and their users from data breaches. In 2015, the average total cost of a data breach was $3.8 million¹. Identity management can offer protection against these types of threats with security features like multifactor authentication breached password protection, anomaly detection, and more.

Identity management solutions provide benefits for all types of businesses. IAM can also provide distinctly and specialized features to serve B2B, B2C, and B2E use cases.

• B2B: A business provides federated identity management to another business, such as Trello allowing another business to log into Trello with their enterprise credentials.
• B2C: A business provides social authentication to consumers through Facebook, Google, or other social media identity providers.
• B2E: A business provides single sign-on to its own employees.