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IT users rank PayPal, Google and Amazon as their employers’ top three preferred identity providers to their organization, while Yahoo was ranked the lowest priority, according to a report from CA Technologies and the Ponemon Institute.
The same IT users ranked Google, LinkedIn and PayPal as their personally preferred identity provider for accessing services as individuals.
The survey of 1,589 IT and IT security practitioners and 1,526 business users was devised to understand current trends in bring your own identity, or BYOID, which is defined as the use of trusted digital or social networking identities.
According to the survey findings, IT users say the primary value of BYOID is from strengthening the authentication process (67 percent) and reducing impersonation risk (54 percent).
Business users believe the BYOID value comes from delivering a better customer experience (79 percent) and increasing the effectiveness of marketing campaigns (76 percent).
While certain identity providers like Google and PayPal were ranked high, there was no runaway dominant provider, indicating consumers’ opinions vary and that organizations are going to keep supporting a wide range of identity providers to ensure maximum reach.
“Mobile and Web are driving almost every major trend. People are increasingly interacting with online services from mobile devices,” Merritt Maxim, CA’s director of identity management product marketing, told eWEEK. “Anyone who has had to enter into a 10 character alphanumeric password on a mobile touch-screen knows how frustrating that process can be. This is a specific problem that BYOID can help solve.”
The survey indicated IT users are much more interested in identity providers having some formal accreditation, with 59 percent claiming it was essential or very important and another 21 percent say it is important.
Only 27 percent of business users believe formal accreditation is essential or very important.
Meritt said one of the common complaints from users of today’s login procedures is frustration at having to create another account or password that will likely get forgotten.
“Studies have shown that when asked to create a new online account to complete a purchase, a large number of users will just abandon the process,” Meritt explained. “Those disaffected customers represent lost revenue, which is why business users are interested in things like BYOID that alleviate that user registration process, improve brand loyalty and ultimately incremental revenue.”
When asked to identify the most significant inhibitor to BYOID deployment in their organization, 31 percent of business users cite cost, followed by complexity (23 percent) and risk and liability concerns (19 percent).
“Consumers increasingly expect simple social-like experiences with online activities. If the experience is too cumbersome, they will opt out and use someone else,” Meritt said. “This need for a simple user experience will continue to be of high importance, and the organizations that implement the best user experience are the ones most likely to win.”
Both groups said having access to other data from the identity provider such as history of password resets and account abuse were of greatest interest as this data can help identify potentially fraudulent activity.