Nikhil Shrivastava

Senior Product Manager

Auth0 Dashboard and Docs are now available in Japanese - enjoy a localized experience for secure identity solutions.

We’re excited to announce that Japanese has been added as a new language option to the Auth0 Dashboard and Documentation! This enhancement makes building secure and frictionless identity solutions in Japanese easier than ever before.

## What’s New?

* **Dashboard in Japanese**: Configure your applications and manage authentication flows directly in the Auth0 Dashboard with full Japanese support.
* **Localized Documentation**: Whether you’re setting up Single Sign-On (SSO), implementing MFA, or exploring our SDKs, you can now access it all in Japanese.
* **Consistent Experience**: Enjoy a seamless and coherent user experience across the platform, thanks to carefully localized interfaces and content.

## How to Consume Content in Japanese

By default, if your language preference is set to Japanese in your browser settings, Auth0 will detect this and automatically serve the Dashboard and Documentation in Japanese. If you’d like to switch to another language—or if you want to manually override the default setting—here are the steps to do so:

1. **On the Auth0 Dashboard**:

* Log into the Auth0 Dashboard.
* Look for the language switcher in the top-right corner.
* Alternatively, click your account icon and navigate to **Your Profile**.
* Select **Japanese** under the language options.

![Auth0 Dashboard in Japanese](https://images.ctfassets.net/23aumh6u8s0i/7h427VUyejEzWYgIwr5681/06708132a83061b977fa3bdb280bc44d/japanese-now-available-on-the-auth0-dashboard-and-docs_01.jpg)

![Auth0 Dashboard in Japanese](https://images.ctfassets.net/23aumh6u8s0i/6pI7FyQfBEfssfTHBHfWrM/b64b65e986536fb5031d268d4cec4e6e/japanese-now-available-on-the-auth0-dashboard-and-docs_02.jpg)

2. **In the Auth0 Docs**:

* Visit the Auth0 Docs.
* Look for the language switcher in the top-right corner.
* Choose **Japanese** to browse articles, tutorials, and guides in that language.

![Auth0 Docs in Japanese](https://images.ctfassets.net/23aumh6u8s0i/22Cn5smpMA9h1i5BR5or9o/e24008f44aa3251306ae5ee95b8e6b0f/japanese-now-available-on-the-auth0-dashboard-and-docs_03.png)

## What’s Next

If you spot any issues with the translation - please share your feedback with us or contact our support team.

**On the Dashboard**: Use the **Give Feedback** button in the bottom left corner to let us know how we’re doing.

**In the Docs**: Look for the page-specific feedback form on each documentation page to share your thoughts.

Thank you and **ありがとうございます (arigatō gozaimasu)!** We’re looking forward to seeing how this update empowers developers and businesses in Japan and around the globe to build secure, scalable solutions with Auth0.

Japanese Now Available on the Auth0 Dashboard and Docs

samantha-murphy

Samantha Murphy is a Principal Product Marketing Manager for Okta. She leads the Customer Identity Security portfolio, driving go-to-market strategy, messaging, launches, and strategic growth initiatives. Before Okta, Sam spent over six years in product management roles in Identity and Access Management.

She holds a Bachelor of Commerce degree from Queen’s Smith School of Business and is from Ottawa, Canada.

In her free time, Sam makes the most of winter by playing an awesome ice skating sport called ringette.

Principal Product Marketing Manager, Customer Identity

Samantha Murphy

Innovative companies are reshaping CX with instant gratification, consistency, and hyper-personalization, raising consumer expectations and market standards.

Innovative companies like streaming services and digital marketplaces are setting bold new Customer Experience (CX) standards, redefining consumer expectations around speed, convenience, and personalization. To accelerate and cement their market dominance, these CX powerhouses have raised the bar (and customer expectations) in three key ways:

- **Instant gratification** &mdash; in the form of instant access and seamless experiences such as one-click checkouts
- **Consistency** &mdash; interactions continue seamlessly across channels, devices, products and services
- **Hyper-personalization** &mdash; individualized experiences and recommendations based on preferences and behaviors

## Better Experiences = Better Business

These new CX standards aren’t merely nice-to-haves that customers prefer––they are table-stakes requirements for any business hoping to build and maintain a competitive advantage. Today’s customers *expect* engaging experiences, convenient journeys, and secure digital platforms. Before they give you their business, they need to know that you’re able to cater to their unique needs, provide ease of use across multiple channels, and protect their data and sensitive information.

![Better Experiences = Better Business](https://images.ctfassets.net/23aumh6u8s0i/4uL4F3yqACDm61n5aMiRT1/dfc4ef40b3b83c4ee68705c8ca7e801d/OKTA1067_Auth0_Relaunch_Blog_Image_1_Stats.jpg)

## It All Starts With Identity

Meeting these customer expectations begins with getting Customer Identity right. 

Why? Because Identity orchestration is the backbone of everything — from security to a best-in-class CX.

> **Identity Orchestration** &mdash; is the process of managing and integrating Identity-related functions such as authentication, authorization, security, privacy, and personalization across systems and channels.

**Identity Orchestration** supports every critical aspect of the modern customer journey, from login to omnichannel navigation and continuous threat protection. **Modern Customer Identity** can strengthen security and fraud prevention while simultaneously creating seamless cross-channel continuity and personalized journeys that delight your customers. It also drives privacy by helping protect customer-sensitive data and enabling companies to progressively build customer profiles with consent. This in turn supports key marketing functions like loyalty activation and tracking, driving business growth.

> **In short: Getting the customer experience right begins with getting Customer Identity right**. But this is easier said than done.

## Upgrade Identity, Unlock Customer Loyalty

Here’s the ugly truth: Homegrown and legacy Identity solutions simply cannot support the modern CX and security standards that today’s customers demand.

For example, solely relying on legacy Identity methods like complex passwords, captchas, and rigid multifactor authentication (MFA) policies creates friction that undermines conversion. Identity-powered data-collection tools that burden customers with a million questions at sign-up have the same revenue-tanking effect.

To support customer loyalty and long-term growth, your business needs a modern Identity platform that streamlines experiences, enables personalized interactions, and strengthens security (without adding excessive friction).

Compromising on any one of these points isn’t an option. Today’s competitive landscape requires an approach to Customer Identity that can hit every mark––quickly, efficiently, and continuously.

## Auth0 Is the Answer

Auth0 helps businesses of all types and sizes deliver convenient, trustworthy experiences that customers have come to expect. Designed for both simplicity and scalability, Auth0 empowers companies like yours to adopt a modern, developer-first approach to Customer Identity. In doing so, Auth0 enables your teams to leverage the full power of Identity across every aspect of the customer journey and deliver outcomes that support growth.

![Auth0 Is the Answer](https://images.ctfassets.net/23aumh6u8s0i/396zh0bFmWePy5f5dRY1e0/9529f63ac52dd9fb6523570ad04c9788/Three-speaker_Podcast_Templates__Auth0_Platform__-_1200x628.png)

## Layer 1: Secure Experiences

![Secure Experiences](https://images.ctfassets.net/23aumh6u8s0i/3Ojc09oomw7ENwTB0BWhbF/7dcabdb076f87e0a6538ae764c0c3d2a/OKTA1067_Auth0_Relaunch_Blog_Image_2_Layer_1.jpg)

Auth0 helps secure customer experiences across their entire journey &mdash; before, at, and after login. To keep experiences streamlined, Auth0 leverages context to add additional layers of security when needed and reduce them when not needed. This enables the ideal combination of security and seamlessness.

### Before Login

Spotlight solutions:

* **Bot Detection** &mdash; Continuous, AI-powered monitoring for Identity threats that responds to bad bots in real time 
* **Breached Password Detection** &mdash; Detect compromised credentials and block and notify users in real time to keep threat actors out
* **SCIM** &mdash; Streamlined user management that automates the provisioning and de-provisioning of user access for B2B SaaS applications

![jersey-mikes](https://images.ctfassets.net/23aumh6u8s0i/1BMaeu8xs2ppTl8VaTMdml/543750478b37ce860cd458d0962376b6/OKTA1067_Auth0_Relaunch_Blog_Image_3_Jersey_Mikes.jpg)
Read more about this story [here](https://www.okta.com/customers/jersey-mikes/).

### At Login

Spotlight solutions:

* **Universal Login** &mdash; A customizable toolkit for building robust, branded authentication flows from a variety of login methods
* **Passwordless** &mdash; Convenient, secure sign-in using options including passkeys, email magic links, biometrics and One-Time-Passwords (OTPs).
* **Attack Protection** &mdash; helps prevent account takeover attacks with Brute Force Protection and Suspicious IP Throttling.
* **Token Management** &mdash; A secure framework for issuing, validating, and renewing JSON Web Tokens (JWTs) that streamline API access while protecting sensitive data during transmission
* **Progressive Profiling** &mdash; An easy way to gather customer data over time as they engage with your brand (as opposed to flooding them with questions at sign-up or login and scaring them away)
* **Organizations** &mdash; Enterprise-grade, secure, scalable, branded multi-tenant authentication for your B2B SaaS applications

![moneyfarm](https://images.ctfassets.net/23aumh6u8s0i/1aVC0XqsaxBT0txqkrnVzt/dc401cbe0ecd9d3fa5c7cf348c7b2f13/OKTA1067_Auth0_Relaunch_Blog_Image_4_Moneyfarm.jpg)
Read more about this story [here](https://www.okta.com/customers/moneyfarm/).

![cinepolis](https://images.ctfassets.net/23aumh6u8s0i/2Sh98UZEppi086rLYJTlCr/c1c9a8619ffbffac82187c823035b814/OKTA1067_Auth0_Relaunch_Blog_Image_5_Cinepolis.jpg)
Read more about this story [here](https://www.okta.com/customers/cinepolis/).

### After Login

Spotlight solutions:

* **Auth0 Fine-Grained Authorization** &mdash; A simpler way to programmatically define authorization and access at scale across applications
* **Highly Regulated Identity** &mdash; Powerful protections for highly sensitive information that trigger Strong Customer Authentication (SCA) when necessary
* **Client Initiated Backchannel Authentication** &mdash; Secure and streamlined user authentication for call center, in-person, and online interactions
* **Continuous Session Protection** &mdash; A unified way to monitor and manage user sessions, including the prevention of session hijacking and the revocation of suspicious sessions
* **Universal Logout** &mdash; Terminate users’ sessions when integrated threat monitoring tools identify a change in risk

![cribl](https://images.ctfassets.net/23aumh6u8s0i/2G1znaaE8I8iRjXYSaC9Ib/e99f1efba55465981b4e9e5237c8d81b/OKTA1067_Auth0_Relaunch_Blog_Image_6_Cribl.jpg)
Read more about this story [here](https://www.okta.com/customers/cribl/).

## Layer 2: Orchestration

![Orchestration](https://images.ctfassets.net/23aumh6u8s0i/4Xyqph6V36HBEck0EvCxre/7f8e763c47a09df044bc9ae52d1c492e/Copy_of_OKTA1067_Auth0_Relaunch_Blog_Image_7_Layer_2.jpg)

Your business is one of a kind, and this is evident in the uniqueness of your security needs and CX strategy. 

Auth0 puts customization at the core of your company’s security and CX with a range of offerings that your development teams can leverage to build better products––faster. Low- and no-code tools help developers build and optimize authentication flows faster, while pro-code options enable last-mile customizations tailored to your business’s unique needs. 

### Developer Tooling

Spotlight solutions:

* **SDKs and Quickstarts** &mdash; With a few lines of code, your teams can easily integrate Auth0 with any app written in any language and any framework 
* **Automated deployment** &mdash; Manage Auth0 tenant configuration integrated with your existing CI/CD pipeline using Auth0 Deploy CLI or Terraform provider

![signify](https://images.ctfassets.net/23aumh6u8s0i/4Un8sWHBAdmaQyqGVDtDR5/77c947a4b255b71037e7287de12d0a6d/OKTA1067_Auth0_Relaunch_Blog_Image_8_Signify.jpg)
Read more about this story [here](https://www.okta.com/customers/signify/).

### Custom authentication flows

Spotlight solutions:

* **Actions** &mdash; Empower developers with a drag-and-drop interface and flexible code environment that enables them to customize and extend Identity experiences—no-code for speed, pro-code for precision
* **Forms** &mdash; A no-code visual editor for orchestrating, customizing, and securing sign-up and login flows

![submittable](https://images.ctfassets.net/23aumh6u8s0i/5OavujxBJu2IrT7iCSeCon/2e390cc4ff3bc92730ba0d0e94a760bb/OKTA1067_Auth0_Relaunch_Blog_Image_9_Submittable.jpg)
Read more about this story [here](https://www.okta.com/customers/submittable/).

### Security operations

Spotlight solutions:

* **Security Center** &mdash; helps organizations detect and respond to attacks faster and fine-tune their security posture with intelligent insights and custom threshold alerting for Identity-related events, anomalies, and general efficacy.
* **Log Streaming** &mdash; further supports faster event response by allowing the streaming of relevant Auth0 activity to third-party SIEM tooling.

![Splunk](https://images.ctfassets.net/23aumh6u8s0i/4LgnDhyuTSTFmvIphsmxKt/6ff774c7ddb324f55be62440d10f6c37/OKTA1067_Auth0_Relaunch_Blog_Image_10_Splunk.jpg)

## Layer 3: Extensibility

![Extensibility](https://images.ctfassets.net/23aumh6u8s0i/1FXD0NT7qsqMAxYWIBszDQ/c743dda19d466dc00a6550181785d0d5/OKTA1067_Auth0_Relaunch_Blog_Image_11_Layer_3.jpg)

As your business evolves, your identity solution should seamlessly connect with your changing tech and security stack—it's crucial for long-term success. 

Auth0 is built on the principle of extensibility. By connecting every part of your technology and security ecosystem, Auth0 enables continuous strength of security while also supporting changing customer experience  functions across all channels.

### Marketplace Integrations

Quickly find and add low-maintenance, no-code integrations with applications and APIs. Using an intuitive drag-and-drop interface, it easily addresses a variety of Identity use cases such as Identity verification/proofing, fraud prevention, log streaming, data platforms, and consent management.

![Marketplace Integrations](https://images.ctfassets.net/23aumh6u8s0i/1MMEK4OhC8WgiGHWT9eijc/d50c0e020631562833bdc614ef87cc7a/OKTA1067_Auth0_Relaunch_Blog_Image_12_CLEAR.jpg)

## The Auth0 Difference

Best-in-class businesses adopt modern, developer-first Customer Identity. With Auth0, your development teams get pre-built tools—SDKs, APIs, customizable UI components, and security integrations—that can be activated instantly and extended as needed. This approach enables businesses to:

* Secure every step of the customer journey without adding friction
* Automate and orchestrate Identity flows to accelerate time to market
* Empower developers to integrate Identity their way, providing scalability and future-proofing

That’s exactly what the Auth0 Platform delivers to thousands of businesses worldwide—powering **10+ billion** authentications every month. Yes, that’s** billion with a B! **

Ready to build seamless, secure identity experiences? [Let’s talk](https://auth0.com/contact-us). Want to learn more about why companies like yours choose Auth0? Check out our [ebook](https://auth0.com/resources/ebooks/why-auth0-by-okta).


Designing Apps for Growth: How a Layered Identity Solution Helps You Win

37590801?s=460&v=4

Howdy! 🤠 I do technology research at Auth0 with a focus on security and identity and develop apps to showcase the advantages or pitfalls of such technology. I also contribute to the development of our SDKs, documentation, and design systems, such as <a target='_blank' rel='noopener noreferrer' href='https://github.com/auth0/cosmos'>Cosmos</a>. The majority of my engineering work revolves around AWS, React, and Node, but my research and content development involves a wide range of topics such as Golang, performance, and cryptography. Additionally, I am one of the core maintainers of this blog. Running a blog at scale with over 600,000 unique visitors per month is quite challenging! I was an Auth0 customer before I became an employee, and I've always loved how much easier it is to implement authentication with Auth0. Curious to try it out? <a href='https://auth0.com/signup' data-amp-replace='CLIENT_ID' data-amp-addparams='anonId=CLIENT_ID(cid-scope-cookie-fallback-name)'>Sign up for a free account</a> ⚡️.

Staff Developer Advocate

Dan Arias

For developers tasked with building global applications, choosing the right authentication solution is crucial. Auth0's ability to bridge the gap between enterprise and consumer needs makes it a standout choice in the crowded authentication landscape.

In today's multi-platform world, identity management isn't a one-size-fits-all solution. As developers, we need an authentication system that not only secures enterprise-level applications (B2B) but also delivers a seamless, user-friendly experience for consumer-facing products (B2C). That's why developers across the world turn to Auth0 when they feel it's time to delegate the task of building and maintaining ***authentication and authorization*** to a vendor with deep security expertise and adaptable technical capabilities. 

## The Challenge of Global Scale

Global companies with multifaceted portfolios face a unique set of challenges:

- **Multiple Platforms:** Users access their services via smartphones, PCs, consoles, and more.

- **Diverse Regulatory Requirements:** Compliance with international data privacy and security regulations is non-negotiable.

- **Customization Needs:** Every organization has its own unique workflows and integration requirements, such as compatibility with legacy authentication systems or [support for protocols like SCIM](https://auth0.com/docs/authenticate/protocols/scim).

For developers building at a global scale, the solution needs to be robust enough to handle high security and regulatory demands while remaining flexible for rapid development and global expansion.

## Why Auth0 Stands Out

Auth0's strength lies in its ability to effectively serve both B2B and B2C needs across geographical regions. Here's what makes it a compelling choice:

### Dual capability

Auth0 is built to handle both enterprise-grade integrations and consumer-friendly interfaces. While many competitors specialize in one or the other, Auth0 offers the best of both worlds.

### Robust security

With advanced features like multi-factor authentication (MFA), threat detection, and continuous monitoring, Auth0 meets stringent global security standards—critical for protecting sensitive user data and adhering to mandatory compliance requirements. Don't let regulation get in the way of expansion.

### Scalability

Whether you're serving thousands or millions of users across different regions, Auth0 scales seamlessly. This is vital for companies that operate in a global marketplace.

### Flexible customization

Auth0 allows extensive customization through robust APIs that support multiple programming languages and frameworks. This flexibility means you can tailor the authentication process to meet your specific needs, ensuring a smooth user experience regardless of the platform. Whether you are building the next top-ranking mobile game, a desktop AI application, or a streaming service, Auth0 has a solution that adapts to the user experience you want to attract, convert, and retain paying customers.

### Comprehensive support
 
Transitioning to a new authentication system can be complex. Auth0's professional services and support ensure that even challenges like regulatory compliance or cloud infrastructure migrations (e.g., AWS) are managed efficiently.

## Auth0 Is Ahead of the Competition

While there are strong contenders in the IDaaS space, they often excel in more niche areas. A competitor may be a strong option for enterprise integrations but may require extra effort to tailor it for consumer-facing applications. Some competitor platforms often focus on streamlined, developer-friendly solutions for either simple consumer apps or internal enterprise tools. However, they might not offer the same depth of customization and B2B/B2C functionality required for complex global environments or operations.

Auth0's proven track record in both B2B and B2C scenarios makes it uniquely suited for organizations that need a versatile, scalable, and secure authentication solution.

## See Auth0 in Action

Seeing is believing. Experience Auth0's power firsthand by diving into our developer resources. There, you can quickly set up secure authentication flows for both business and consumer scenarios.

### Interactive demo
   
Try out [our reference B2B SaaS application](https://saastart.app/) to experience features of multi-tenancy support, user management and access controls, security policies, self-service Single Sign-On configuration, and more out-of-the-box. Follow our [guided walkthrough](https://auth0.com/blog/speed-up-your-customer-identity-journey-with-auth0-saastart/) to see how easily Auth0 can secure B2B SaaS applications. If you prefer to learn while reading code, check out the [Auth0 B2B SaaS Starter open-source repo](https://github.com/auth0-developer-hub/auth0-b2b-saas-starter).

### Step-by-step developer guides

Check out our [detailed developer guides](https://developer.auth0.com/resources/guides) on integrating strong authentication using Auth0 with different frameworks and languages. These guides will show you how to implement everything from simple login pages to role-based access control in Single-Page Applications (SPAs), APIs, and web applications. Once you are done with the basics, explore our [developer labs](https://developer.auth0.com/resources/labs) to learn how to extend your authentication solution to include features such as Single-Sign On (SSO) for end-users using Google, GitHub, or X/Twitter, as well as enhancing your authorization models with Fine-Grained Authorization.

### Code samples

[Clone any of our starter projects](https://developer.auth0.com/resources/code-samples) and see practical examples of how Auth0 streamlines the implementation of authentication and authorization. Experiment with the code, tweak it to suit your needs, and accelerate your development process.

## Conclusion

For developers tasked with building global applications, choosing the right IDaaS solution is crucial. Auth0's ability to bridge the gap between enterprise and consumer needs—coupled with its robust security, scalability, and flexibility—makes it a standout choice in the crowded authentication landscape. 

If you're developing a platform that must meet both B2B and B2C demands on a global scale, Auth0 is definitely worth a closer look. [Global companies like SEGA have chosen Auth0](https://www.okta.com/jp/press-room/press-releases/sega-auth0/) as a comprehensive and compliant yet flexible authentication solution that not only enhances security and user experience but also streamlines development and operational efficiency: by opting for a ready-to-use IDaaS solution rather than maintaining an in-house system, SEGA was able to lower development friction, allowing their teams to focus more on core game development and innovation.

Authentication and Authorization For Developers Who Build at Global Scale

Calah Vargas

Calah Vargas is the Associate Manager of Product Led Growth, focusing on nonprofits, startups, and partnerships. She works on product marketing and customer marketing initiatives. Outside work, you can find her cooking, trying new restaurants, and traveling with friends and family.

Associate Manager, PLG

Shreya Gupta

Shreya is the Developer Advocate for Auth0 for Startups. She previously founded a non-profit called Bit Project, worked at a YC-backed Startup as a Developer Advocate, and currently hosts The Developer Diaries podcast. Through each experience, she has found her love for building resources and tools that help move the needle for developers. Outside of work, she enjoys traveling, watching K-Dramas, and drinking boba.

Developer Advocate, Startups

How to Evaluate a Customer Identity and Auth Solution

<div class="alert alert-info alert-icon">
 
 This blog post references information found in our ebook: <a href="https://auth0.com/resources/ebooks/why-auth0-by-okta/">Why Auth0</a>. 
</div>

**TL;DR:** Your login box must find the right balance between user convenience, privacy, and security. There are other solutions on the market that can help with that, but at Auth0, we know Identity is so much more than just the login box.

<AmpContent>
<amp-youtube
 data-videoid="ftnhO8EKkvo"
 layout="responsive"
 width="480" height="270">
</amp-youtube>
</AmpContent>
<NonAmpContent>
<div class='embed-container' style="position: relative; padding-bottom: 56.25%; height: 0; overflow: hidden; max-width: 100%;margin-bottom:40px;"><iframe style="position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%;" src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/ftnhO8EKkvo' frameborder='0' allowfullscreen></iframe></div>
</NonAmpContent>


When you’re deciding how your customers will log in to your website or application, your first step is probably figuring out if you’ll [build auth in-house or buy an out of the box solution](https://www.okta.com/resources/whitepaper-build-vs-buy/thankyou/). If you’re trying to get your app to market faster, want to reduce engineering costs, and want to mitigate security and compliance risks, a pre-built solution is the best option. It’ll help you achieve these goals and ultimately allow you to focus on what matters most - your core product. 

Once you're ready to take the next step and purchase, it's time to evaluate your best option. Here’s a list of what to consider when choosing a solution:

**Ease of Implementation**: Will the solution help you build your product and achieve product-market fit quicker than your competitors? There’s a big difference between getting some basic login functionality working and having a stable, scalable, and prime-time-ready Identity infrastructure in place. Depending on your industry and customer requirements, you’ll need to optimize your Identity flow for security and privacy, user experience, and, in most cases, convenience – while also building an experience that can easily be updated and maintained. 

**Scalability and Reliability**: Will the solution support you today, tomorrow, and in the future? Can the solution quickly adapt and scale to meet your website’s or app’s needs? Identity might be too large of a domain for your team to tackle all at once. Most companies start with the basics and then gradually add features over time. By understanding where you are today and where you could be in the future, the solution should support your team in delivering an Identity roadmap that enables growth, addresses security, and meets ever-growing customer expectations.

![A Comprehensive Guide for Your Customer Identity Maturity Journey](https://images.ctfassets.net/23aumh6u8s0i/1PbSZDO561aYL0h4xJvND5/6d4f881c91e7db71b93a12bc73c07f03/why01.jpg)
Source: [_A Comprehensive Guide for Your Customer Identity Maturity Journey_](https://www.okta.com/resources/whitepaper-a-comprehensive-guide-for-your-customer-identity-maturity-journey)



**Security and Compliance:** Last but definitely not least, does the solution comply with new and evolving regulations? Does it meet the requirements for multiple compliance frameworks and certifications? Identity as a domain is governed by an increasing — and increasingly complex — array of data regulations that require you to implement effective safeguards and put users in control of their own data. 

![Security and Compliance](https://images.ctfassets.net/23aumh6u8s0i/3D6mlCWBdASCBOzIXrpDEv/f4818a5d14aa504d334fdd648bc1181f/2176574_Why_Auth0_Feature_Table_Copy_013125_1080x1080_2_021924.jpg)

Whether you’re building a B2C, B2B, or Hybrid application, Auth0 provides the foundational requirements out of the box with broad support for [open standards](https://auth0.com/learn/how-auth0-uses-identity-industry-standards), allowing you to customize your solution with [APIs](https://auth0.com/docs/api), [30+ SDKs](https://auth0.com/docs/libraries), and [Quickstarts](https://auth0.com/docs/quickstarts). With a few lines of code, you can have Auth0 integrated in any app written in any language and any framework. 

At Auth0, security is not an afterthought. We have you covered with features to protect your organization and customers. Our product is an extension of yours – as customers, your requirements and feedback guide our product development. We also do the hard work of complying with [new and evolving regulations](https://auth0.com/security), so you have one less thing to worry about. These include:

* Researching threat actor tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) and introducing the advanced security features needed to combat these threats
* Host, platform, and application-layer defenses to filter malicious entities before they can even access the login box or API
* [Adaptive MFA](https://auth0.com/docs/secure/multi-factor-authentication/adaptive-mfa), an extensible MFA policy that can help you protect your tenant from bad actors without increasing friction for real users
* Login-layer defenses that prevent fraudulent signups and account takeovers, including [Attack Protection features](https://auth0.com/docs/secure/attack-protection) that can be turned on with a simple toggle
* [Observability tools](https://auth0.com/docs/secure/security-center) that allow you to see potential attack trends and quickly respond to them in real-time
 

Extensibility is at our core. With [Actions](https://auth0.com/docs/customize/actions), you can write custom Node.js functions that fire during specific events in your Identity flow – develop complex Identity flows on our platform instead of piling on your own infrastructure. [Actions Integrations](https://auth0.com/blog/actions-integrations-are-now-ga/) make extending Auth0 with partner-built innovations even easier, often with no-code, drag-and-drop ease. Instead of building and maintaining custom code, Actions Integrations are easily integrated third-party solutions that can be quickly added to extend your Identity flow. Since launching in late 2020, the [Auth0 Marketplace](https://marketplace.auth0.com/) has helped developers quickly find and install third-party Identity solutions for their applications and APIs. Today, the Marketplace includes more than 300 third-party solutions.

Identity is important to your organization, but it’s not the reason you exist — and whatever that reason is should be the main focus of your engineering resources. Identity also requires significant effort and deep expertise. Choose an Identity provider that doesn’t just provide a login box but a service based on learnings from helping 18,000+ customers. See why customers are choosing Auth0, the comprehensive Identity solution, and solving Identity with [Passkeys](https://learnpasskeys.io/), [Organizations](https://auth0.com/blog/digital-identity-management/#B2B-Ready-with-Auth0-Organizations), and more: [okta.com/customers](https://www.okta.com/customers/). 

[Try Auth0 free today](https://auth0.com/signup?utm_source=blog&utm_medium=auth0&utm_campaign=whyauth0) with up to 7,500 active users and unlimited logins; no credit card is required. If you’re an early-stage company, check if you’re eligible for our Auth0 for Startups program [here](https://auth0.com/startups). We are also proud to offer [preferential pricing for nonprofits](https://auth0.com/nonprofits/get-started)—making the leading Identity service even more accessible. 

<div class="alert alert-info alert-icon">
 
 If you’re interested in learning more about build versus buy, Auth0’s features, or anything else included above, check out our ebook: <a href="https://auth0.com/resources/ebooks/why-auth0-by-okta/">Why Auth0</a>. 
</div>

_These materials and any recommendations within are not legal, privacy, security, compliance, or business advice. These materials are intended for general informational purposes only and may not reflect the most current security, privacy, and legal developments or all relevant issues. You are responsible for obtaining legal, security, privacy, compliance, or business advice from your own lawyer or other professional advisor and should not rely on the recommendations herein. Okta is not liable to you for any loss or damages that may result from your implementation of any recommendations in these materials. Okta makes no representations, warranties, or other assurances regarding the content of these materials. Information regarding Okta's contractual assurances to its customers can be found at[ okta.com/agreements](http://okta.com/agreements)._

Why Auth0?

auziros:jeana-tahnk

Jeana has been in the tech industry for 15+ years, both as a communications professional and writer. As Director of Global Communications at Auth0, she works with her internal team and external agencies to amplify the company's visibility worldwide and establish its leadership in the identity industry. When she is not working, she can most likely be found on a field watching one of her three kids playing sports, or cleaning up after her one-year-old retriever who chews everything.

Senior Director, Global Communications

Jeana Tahnk

Trusted integrations from industry-leading third-party solutions extend Auth0's functionality to solve increasingly complex identity needs

**BELLEVUE, Wash. – Sept. 22, 2020 –** The [Auth0](https://auth0.com/) Identity Platform, a product unit within Okta, today announced the launch of [Auth0 Marketplace](https://marketplace.auth0.com), a trusted partner integrations catalog that enables customers to quickly extend the core functionality of the Auth0 platform and use it as an identity solutions hub for their specific needs. Auth0 Marketplace, with its ever-growing breadth of verified partner integrations, provides customers with the extensibility, customization, and confidence to meet their identity needs of today and tomorrow.

Auth0 Marketplace gives customers the power and flexibility to combine Auth0 with adjacent technologies, enabling them to put identity at the forefront of larger projects such as digital transformation, threat detection, compliance, customer conversion, and more. The identity management landscape is increasingly complex, fueled in large part by new security threats, regulatory requirements, privacy laws, and user convenience demands. Yet its function within enterprises is simultaneously becoming more critical, making extensibility a pivotal feature within any identity platform. 

Auth0 Marketplace leverages Auth0's inherently extensible platform even further and supports solutions that cover a wide range of identity needs, including Consent Management, Identity Proofing, Log Streaming, Security, SMS/Email, Single Sign On, Social Login, and more. All integrations have been verified for security and functionality, and are easily discoverable. Once integrations are selected, installation wizards and guides help customers enable these new partner solutions quickly. 

The launch of Auth0 Marketplace reveals two new categories of partner integrations: 

* [**Consent Management**](https://marketplace.auth0.com/categories/consent-management): Obtain and maintain user consent records for collecting data (e.g., via cookies) for ongoing adherence to data privacy regulations like GDPR, CCPA, etc. Auth0 Marketplace features new partner integrations from MyLife Digital, OneTrust, and others. 

* [**Identity Proofing**](https://marketplace.auth0.com/categories/identity-proofing): Verify a user's identity based on real-world factors (e.g., biometrics) and additional factors before granting access. Auth0 Marketplace launches with new partner integrations from Onfido, Vouched, ID DataWeb, Caisson, and others. 

Auth0's existing integrations are now discoverable and available in [Auth0 Marketplace](https://marketplace.auth0.com/), including recently-launched Log Streaming from Splunk, Datadog, Azure Event Grid, and Amazon EventBridge. 

"Consent management, together with identity management, provide a powerful solution for the adherence to the many data privacy policies, like GDPR and CCPA, that continue to crop up and provide incredible hassles for companies," said Kevin Kiley, Chief Revenue Officer at OneTrust. "This issue and need will not go away. Being a premier launch partner in Auth0 Marketplace gives us visibility with Auth0's thousands of customers, and provides them with an integral technology that is more important than ever with today's numerous privacy laws." 

"We are excited to be part of the Auth0 Marketplace launch and have our solution serve as an integral component for Auth0 customers' identity architectures," said Rick Hofmann, VP of Global Partnerships and Alliances at Onfido. "As companies look to accelerate and scale their digital transformation, being able to remotely tie a user to their real, physical identity at onboarding and at other points along the customer journey, is critical to reducing fraud and building customer trust. We look forward to servicing additional audiences via Auth0 Marketplace."

By becoming part of Auth0 Marketplace, partners can participate in the growing demand for digital identity solutions and showcase their innovative products to Auth0's 9,000+ customers worldwide.

"Launching Auth0 Marketplace is a great milestone for the company and further highlights the demand for an extensible identity platform. Giving customers the power to fully adapt Auth0 to their needs widens their ability to build a secure, end-to-end holistic identity solution. Auth0 Marketplace partners represent the integrations that matter for identity," said Shiven Ramji, Chief Product Officer at Auth0. "Auth0 Marketplace will open the door to external innovation and make it easier for our customers to work with Auth0 as a true hub for identity management."

'[**Introducing Auth0 Marketplace**](https://auth0.com/blog/introducing-auth0-marketplace)' provides more detail about how to discover and enable integrations that help businesses solve identity. In addition, Auth0 will be hosting a webinar on October 7th to take a deep dive into Auth0 Marketplace and how it can help customers. Please visit the [registration page](https://auth0.com/resources/upcoming-webinars/auth0-marketplace-webinar) for more details. Companies that wish to become part of Auth0 Marketplace can find more information at the [Auth0 Partners page](https://auth0.com/partners). 
 
<include src="asides/AboutAuth0" />

### Media Contacts
Jeana Tahnk 
Global Communications 
Auth0 
press@auth0.com

Hannah Carroll 
Matter for Auth0 
auth0@matternow.com

Auth0 Marketplace Launches and Provides Even Greater Extensibility for Building Identity Solutions

1Vitor de Sousa_Auth0

As Regional Vice President, Vitor de Sousa supports Okta and Auth0's German customers in achieving their Identity and Access Management goals. With more than 20 years of experience in the consumer goods industry, as well as in technology and software sales, he develops strategically smart and creative solutions for the interplay of identity authentication, customer experience, and data protection.

Regional Vice President, Enterprise Sales - Germany

Vitor de Sousa

The pandemic accelerated digitization initiatives, a robust CIAM solution can assist in an iterative migration to the cloud

In the DACH region, trust is everything, and one of the first places you can build consumer trust is your login experience. German consumers say their main frustrations with signing up to a new app or online service are having to fill in long login or sign-up forms (42%) and entering private information (38%), followed by having to create a password that has to meet certain requirements (33%), and a new ID and password for every app or online service (31%). These statistics come from a [global research study](https://info.auth0.com/erwartungen-und-realitat.html) conducted by Auth0 and YouGov, including more than 2,000 consumers and 200 IT/marketing decision-makers in Germany.

One of the challenges organizations encounter when looking to launch new services or feature sets is the fact that many of these features are cloud-based while existing services that could benefit from integration are often legacy and hosted on-premises. Finding an [Identity as a Service (IDaaS)](https://auth0.com/blog/what-is-idaas/) provider who can link those legacy systems and modern cloud-first platforms is an important step towards creating a future-proof service. However, many organizations in the DACH region are still building their own identity solutions. Or they’re misusing tools designed for managing employee identities for customer-facing needs. Both of these scenarios can introduce additional pain points when it comes to joining legacy and modern systems.

## Digitization Projects Are Resource Intensive

IT departments have spent the better part of the last 18 months establishing work-from-home protocols, migrating critical systems to the cloud for better access, and ensuring that everyone’s data stays safe and secure throughout the transition. Despite the acceleration in these digitization projects brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic, many of these systems have to remain housed on legacy on-prem servers due to a lack of alternatives. Bridging the gap between these and the convenient cloud-based tools your customers need access to is a large undertaking, especially for IT teams that are already stretched thin supporting ongoing internal needs.

Your IT and development teams support the organization’s goals by creating and maintaining the best web applications for your customers and by keeping your infrastructure running smoothly. That way, everyone, both inside and outside of the company, has the best experience possible. Partnering with an IDaaS provider like Auth0 will free those teams to continue focusing on their primary goals by taking the task of user authentication off their hands — and putting it in the hands of identity experts. This ensures your users get the CX they’ve come to expect while you maintain control over your data and privacy.

## Legacy Workforce Identity Solutions Are Not Built To Face External Threats

The workforce [Identity and Access Management (IAM)](https://auth0.com/blog/what-is-iam/) tool you’re using today may look like an attractive option for your customer-facing needs. There are several problems with this idea, starting with the simple fact that IAM solutions are not focused on user experience (UX). Their priority is security, keeping your company’s intellectual property safe and secure from bad actors. 

The threats facing customer applications can be vastly different in type and scale. Workforce IAM verifies employee identity in order to approve access to just the tools they need to do their job effectively, from primarily company-owned devices. [Customer Identity and Access Management (CIAM)](https://auth0.com/blog/what-is-ciam/#:~:text=Auth0%20Docs&text=Customer%20Identity%20and%20Access%20Management,%2C%20customer%20experience%2C%20and%20analytics.) solutions, on the other hand, need to integrate protection against brute force attacks, password spraying attacks, along with other outside attack vectors. And they need to do that while maintaining identity verification across potentially millions of end-user devices and networks. Additional hurdles exist as well; for example, many IAM tools are on-prem only and unable to protect your new cloud-first infrastructure. 

## Growing Demand From Consumers for a Low-Friction Customer Experience

The acceleration and growth of online tools have increased consumer expectations for a safe and simple identity experience. They’re no longer willing to wait for slow pages to load or to endure lengthy and complex account creation flows. Your customers demand-responsive, intuitive design, or they’ll take their business elsewhere. In fact, 78% of German consumers say they have [abandoned an app or online service](https://info.auth0.com/erwartungen-und-realitat.html) due to an arduous login experience.

Addressing the systemic issues that need attention to keep up with this demand will put additional stress on your internal teams, pulling their attention away from those core goals we discussed above. You don’t need to sacrifice your user experience in order to create a user-friendly and trusted authentication experience. Auth0 provides a secure platform with a variety of cloud deployment options, including [private cloud deployments on Microsoft Azure](https://auth0.com/blog/auth0-on-microsoft-azure-as-a-private-cloud-deployment-option/) or AWS infrastructure, and public cloud options using AWS facilities in multiple regions, including Frankfurt. Built by and for development teams, Auth0 is easily customizable to create exactly the low-friction experience your customers demand without sacrificing security and extensibility.

## Auth0 Lets You Find the Right Mix of Security, Privacy, and CX

We’ve discussed three pain points organizations in the DACH region are likely to encounter when looking to deploy a new identity and authentication solution across both legacy and cloud-based systems. The Auth0 Identity Platform has a robust feature set designed to address these challenges and any others you may encounter as you embark on your own identity project.

### Extensibility allows you to quickly adapt your digitization project

Auth0’s founders wrote the book on identity management at Microsoft while helping development teams remove barriers to building applications in the cloud. The Auth0 Identity Platform is designed with developers in mind, with multiple [extensibility](https://auth0.com/extensibility) points that allow you to configure the exact authentication flows you want.

### Exhaustive integrations mean you can bridge the legacy/cloud gap easily and iteratively

No matter what systems you have housed on-prem or on legacy infrastructure and what you have already migrated to the cloud, our [Application Programming Interfaces (APIs)](https://auth0.com/docs/api) and [Software Development Kit (SDK) libraries](https://auth0.com/docs/libraries) mean, you can use one CIAM solution to bridge the gap. That allows you the flexibility to continue your deployment iteratively, knowing that your customer experience won’t suffer any negative impacts as you migrate more services to the cloud on your own schedule.

We’re able to integrate with most existing cloud-based SaaS services via our APIs and SDKs but can also integrate with your on-premise environments as long as they’re accessible via API or otherwise. We are also up to date with the [General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)](https://auth0.com/docs/compliance/gdpr) enacted by the European Union in 2018, so we can help and support our customers in meeting their compliance requirements.

Additionally, [Auth0 Marketplace](https://marketplace.auth0.com/) and [Actions](https://auth0.com/actions) provide access to a wide array of out-of-the-box integrations with most line-of-business software and services. That means you can quickly connect your CMS and ERP to your new web app, and your users won’t see any change in their experience as it’s serverless, so there won’t be any interruption to your services.

### No-, low-, and pro-code options for creating a low-friction user experience

Between the pre-configured integrations in [Auth0 Marketplace](https://marketplace.auth0.com/) and our low-code [Actions](https://auth0.com/actions) capability, your development team can easily customize Auth0 to meet your customers’ expectations for a secure and low-friction authentication experience. For even more control, we still offer pro-code customization, as always, via our JavaScript editor.

The ability to have all your identity needs up and running quickly means your team can focus on serving their primary functions. Your developers can continue delivering top-quality experiences for your customers, and IT support can maintain your internal employees’ work environment, no matter where they’re working from.

## Partnering With Auth0 Ensures a Secure, Customizable CIAM Experience

You can rely on the identity professionals at Auth0 to help:

* focus your development team on innovation
* deliver the identity experience consumers have come to expect
* protect customer data with a deployment option that works for your business

That’s how you deliver an excellent user experience without compromising security or privacy along the way. Read more about our [compliance and certifications](https://auth0.com/docs/compliance), then [reach out to an identity expert](https://auth0.com/contact-us) to continue the conversation about how partnering with Auth0 can help your organization. 




Bridging Legacy Systems and Digital Transformation with CIAM

kaycie-east

As PR Manager, Kaycie supports public relations and global communications efforts for Auth0 in the AMER region. When not promoting the Auth0 brand, Kaycie can be found hiking, traveling, or searching for the next best bite to eat.

PR Manager, AMER Region

Kaycie East

Value-added distributor to provide Auth0’s identity management solutions for LATAM’s top companies

**BUENOS AIRES, Argentina – June 29, 2021 –** The** **[Auth0 Identity Platform](https://auth0.com/), a product unit within Okta (NASDAQ: OKTA), today announced a partnership with [CLM](https://clm.com.br/), a value-added distributor that specializes in advanced data center infrastructure and cybersecurity. CLM is Auth0’s first distribution partner in Latin America (LATAM) and extends Auth0’s reach into Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru to provide local partners and their customers with an extensible, trusted identity management solution.

CLM operates in LATAM and specializes in creating opportunities across the channel ecosystem by educating their clients on best of breed solutions such as Auth0 to solve their customer identity management needs. The addition of CLM to Auth0’s [Partner Program](https://auth0.com/partners) and Auth0’s growth in LATAM indicates demand for cloud-based identity management solutions that balance security and customer experience. 

The onset of COVID-19 has accelerated the transition to digital globally. Delivering a secure and frictionless customer experience online starts with a [Customer Identity and Access Management (CIAM)](https://auth0.com/resources/whitepapers/ciam-buyers-guide) solution that enables businesses to capture, convert, and retain customers and fuel business growth. A [recent PwC survey](https://www.pwc.com/us/en/advisory-services/publications/consumer-intelligence-series/pwc-consumer-intelligence-series-customer-experience.pdf) found that approximately half of consumers (49%) in LATAM say they will walk away from a brand they love after just one bad experience. 

“Companies cannot predict exactly what their business and customers will need tomorrow, especially in response to today’s rapidly changing digital environment. With identity at the heart of security and any transformation process, an adaptable and modular identity solution that supports the breadth of all identity needs is essential,” said Gabriel Camargo, product director at CLM. “Auth0 is a trusted identity management provider and a natural addition to our best-in-class portfolio of disruptive vendors.”

Together, Auth0 and CLM are supporting major companies in Latin America—including [AK Networks](http://akcela.com.br/) and [XP Inc.](https://www.xpi.com.br/)—to meet their evolving identity management and security goals.

“We are honored to welcome CLM to our Partner Program and join forces to deliver growth opportunities to customers in Brazil and throughout LATAM,” said Ghazi Masood, SVP, Americas at Auth0. “The addition of Auth0 to CLM’s cybersecurity portfolio means partners and their customers now have a set of extensible building blocks to solve for any identity use case without having to compromise between convenience, privacy, or security—allowing them to innovate and launch products and services faster.”

<include src="asides/AboutAuth0" />
### Media Contacts
Auth0 Global Communications 
[press@auth0.com](mailto:press@auth0.com) 

Grupo Muchnik for Auth0 
[auth0@muchnik.co](mailto:auth0@muchnik.co)

Auth0 Expands Global Partner Network in Latin America with CLM

arthur-bellore

I’m a tech content creator. I enjoy breaking up seemingly complicated topics into easy-to-understand pieces for people to read. When I’m not in front of a computer, you’ll usually find me reading books.

Cybersec Writer

Arthur Bellore

Phishing is the most common cyberattack vector today, and yet people still fall for it. We look at the causes and possible solutions.

Why Phishing Attacks Work

Auth0 integrates netID to support customer privacy needs in Europe

**London/Montabaur, Germany – August 17, 2021 –** The [Auth0](https://auth0.com/) Identity Platform, a product unit within Okta, and the [European netID Foundation](https://enid.foundation/en/) today announced the availability of netID Single Sign-On on [Auth0 Marketplace](https://marketplace.auth0.com/), a catalog of trusted technology integrations to extend the functionality of Auth0’s identity management platform. 

[netID](https://marketplace.auth0.com/integrations/netid-single-sign-on) enables users to sign into apps and websites with their netID account and to decide privately and transparently which data to share. As an independent European identity provider with more than 38 million active user accounts in Germany, netID provides the necessary infrastructure for [Single Sign-On (SSO)](https://auth0.com/blog/what-is-single-sign-on-a-non-developer-s-guide/) but does not store any user data itself. Users can manage the consents they’ve given at any time in netID’s Privacy Center.

“Whether in finance, e-commerce, or online publishing, engaging with users in an all trusted and transparent way is key to driving success. We are excited about the partnership with Auth0 and the availability of the netID Single Sign-On integration. Joint customers can now seamlessly integrate our product and offer users a European alternative to U.S. social login providers,” says Achim Schlosser, board member, and chief technology officer of the European netID Foundation.

“After speaking with many customers, we have identified the integrations that matter to them. The availability of netID on [Auth0 Marketplace](https://marketplace.auth0.com/) is a direct response to the growing need for privacy-enhancing technologies in Europe and part of our continued commitment to international markets,” said Cassio Sampaio, SVP of Product at Auth0. “We are thrilled to have netID as a vetted and valuable vendor in Auth0 Marketplace.” 

Auth0 reviews partner integration functionality and makes available integrations that are easy to discover and integrate for customers. Partners can participate in the growing demand for digital identity solutions and increase their visibility as part of the Auth0 Marketplace and can learn more here: [https://auth0.com/partners](https://auth0.com/partners).

[Auth0, recently acquired by Okta](https://auth0.com/blog/okta-acquisition-announcement/), provides a modern identity platform that helps organizations meet the security, privacy, and convenience needs of their users. Please visit [Auth0 Identity Platform](https://auth0.com/identity-platform) to learn more.

## About the European netID Foundation

The European netID Foundation was established in March 2018 by Mediengruppe RTL Deutschland, ProSiebenSat.1, and United Internet with its brands WEB.DE and GMX. With an independent market solution, the foundation supports Internet offerings from all industry sectors with the implementation of the new European data protection law and, for this purpose, has created the open login standard netID. The initiators of the foundation together reach around 50 million unique users every month and together have more than 38 million active accounts. The foundation is explicitly open to additional partners and initiatives. Further information is available at [www.enid.eu](https://enid.foundation).

<include src="asides/AboutAuth0" />

### Media Contacts
Alexandra Roszkowski 
[presse@enid.eu](mailto:presse@enid.eu) 
+49 162 25 27-188 

Sarah Konarski & Nele Mascher 
Finn Partners for Auth0, DACH 
[auth0de@finnpartners.com](mailto:auth0de@finnpartners.com)

Auth0 Marketplace Now Offers netID Solution

diegopoza

System Engineer, geek, foodie, technology lover, speaker.

Sr Manager, Developer Advocacy

Diego Poza

The tech market in Latin America is growing; Auth0 can help you keep up with a scalable identity solution.

The number of Venture Capital deals signed in Latin America hit a record high of 488 in 2020. That’s nearly double the 2017 number according to [Bloomberg](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-03-16/latin-american-startups-had-record-venture-capital-deals-in-2020). The growth in the tech market in LatAm isn’t only apparent in new startup deals; companies who already have a presence in the region are expanding both through mergers and acquisitions and by looking into new countries to grow their footprint in the region. 

Each scenario brings its own challenges for your IT infrastructure, particularly your[ identity solution](https://auth0.com/blog/how-to-scale-quickly-with-identity/). If you’re expanding into a new country, there’s likely to be a different data privacy regulation you’ll have to comply with. And that startup you’re eyeing probably has a vastly different infrastructure than yours, whether private or public cloud or even legacy on-prem. An Identity management solution has to be able to expand and flex in order to grow with your company, regardless of the specific scenario.

![Business Expansion](https://images.ctfassets.net/23aumh6u8s0i/1HnNeEEQ4hCBb2M4y2ZerT/5b5a1de004ea8021fdc38d042a85a672/Latam05.jpg)

## With Business Expansion Come Business Questions

Let’s take a look at those two potential growth scenarios and what they mean for your business’s identity solution. First up is the acquisition of a competitor or related smaller entity. [Mergers and acquisitions](https://auth0.com/blog/why-your-ma-strategy-has-to-include-an-iam-solution/) (M&A) always bring an array of unique challenges, but for this article, we’re going to focus on the identity challenges associated with the merging of IT infrastructure.

Your web app may be hosted on a public cloud, but the company you just bought has been in business for a while and is still using on-prem hosting for theirs. In order for you to bring both properties together under one identity solution, you need one that can bridge the gap between the two, allowing your new audience access to both apps without managing multiple sets of credentials.

In our second scenario, your organization is considering an expansion into a neighboring country to take advantage of the easing of business restrictions and the growing market for your product that your marketing team has identified. You already comply with the privacy regulations in your country, but are you ready to comply with those abroad? 

Is your organization ready to answer questions like these:

* Can our existing in-house identity platform scale to include our hybrid-cloud infrastructure and the legacy system our latest acquisition uses?
* Is our identity solution ready to handle the influx of new user accounts and login requests when we roll out to our new market?
* Is our consent gathering process in compliance with the regulations in the country we’re expanding into?

If not, or if the answer to any of these questions is “no,” it may be time to consult with an identity specialist. 

<include src="TweetQuote" quoteText="Auth0 recommends you always consult legal counsel when it comes to complying with data privacy regulations." />

## Auth0 Is the Identity Solution That Scales With You

Both of these scenarios mean you’re going to be scaling your infrastructure, adding users to existing web apps, and even adding new web apps. Having an identity solution in place that can easily expand to include controlling access to these new properties can help reign in costs and speed your time to market post-expansion. Our customers tell us that by using Auth0 for their authentication and identity needs, they took their time-to-value from months or years down to weeks or even days.

Credit card company [Visa reported](https://www.marketwatch.com/story/visa-sees-massive-digital-acceleration-with-millions-trying-e-commerce-for-the-first-time-2020-05-13) that during just the first month of the COVID-19 pandemic, more than 13 million cardholders in Latin America made their very first e-commerce transaction. That’s 13 million new accounts being created, 13 million new logins, and 13 million opportunities for identity to go wrong if your solution isn’t scalable. There are many aspects to what makes something scalable. When it comes to identity, we see five as being the most important.

1. **Bridging legacy and cloud systems**

One of the downsides to M&A is that your IT department inherits the backend infrastructure of the other company, for better or worse. Auth0’s extensive SDK libraries and robust APIs mean it’s a simple matter to bridge the gap between legacy systems and modern cloud-first ones. One login box can take your current and new customers to both web apps, no matter where they’re hosted. This ability also speeds your time to value because your developers can maintain focus on their core product delivery rather than piecing together connectivity solutions that may only work for a short time.

2. **Single source of truth for customer data**

Bringing all of your customer data together into one single source of truth (SSoT) makes it that much easier to protect. It also speeds access when a user logs in, as no matter which property they’re using, it has only one place to look to find their credentials, rather than scouring multiple data silos.

3. **Single sign-on**

Customers want low-friction experiences online, and being able to create an account using credentials they already have is a great way to win them over. Single sign-on (using account information from a provider like Apple, Facebook, or Twitter) allows a customer to create an account on your site quickly and easily, and without the need to create and remember a new password.

4. **Breach protection**

The issue of passwords brings us to a major sticking point for many identity solutions, protecting user information from data breaches. According to the most recent [IBM/Ponemon Cost of a Data Breach Study](https://www.ibm.com/security/data-breach), the global average cost of a breach is now $3.86 million (USD). And Verizon reports in their [2021 Data Breach Investigations Report](https://www.verizon.com/business/resources/reports/dbir/) that 61% of breaches involve misuse of credentials. Put those together, and you see why protecting your customers’ information is such a major piece of scaling your online business presence and why a robust identity solution needs to take this aspect into account.

5. **Protection from staffing fluctuations**

An often overlooked aspect of identity projects is the simple fact that people change jobs. If you have an identity tool that was developed in-house two years ago, there’s a good chance you won’t have anyone on staff who can expand it to cover your new properties. That will delay roll-out and extend your time-to-market. 

[Auth0 customer WABI](https://auth0.com/case-studies/wabipay/) is modernizing e-commerce in Latin America. They’re currently active in 11 countries and have expansion plans to add four more in 2021. And they’re trusting Auth0 to scale their identity solution to match these ambitious plans. “WABI is scalable, and we need a partner that is, too. We believe Auth0 will support us in getting there.” Says WABI Business Manager Juan Manuel Mingo. With their planned expansion opening their market to millions of potential new customers, WABI knows they need a robust identity platform that’s ready to handle the influx of new users.

## Auth0 Brings Global Experience to Your Latin America Growth Plans

Our founders are from Argentina, the company was started in the United States, and we currently have people in 30+ countries with more being added every day. Our [international team](https://auth0.com/blog/auth0-expands-global-partner-network-in-latin-america-with-clm/) of identity specialists can help you work out your identity needs and help get you set up with an identity as a service (IDaaS) platform that is ready to grow with your company, no matter what your expansion plans look like. We know that having an identity solution designed to be extensible and flexible to move with your business can mean the difference between a successful rollout or a failed acquisition attempt. 

Auth0 is built on open standards, making it easy to connect with existing systems and varying infrastructure scenarios. Bridging the gap between a public cloud-based web app and an on-prem user database is only the beginning. Our extensive marketplace of integrations means you can connect with your existing business software solutions as well.

Our breach protection includes features such as [bot detection](https://auth0.com/docs/attack-protection/bot-detection), [adaptive MFA](https://auth0.com/multifactor-authentication), [single sign-on](https://auth0.com/single-sign-on), and [passwordless](https://auth0.com/passwordless) flows. And the [Auth0 Marketplace](https://marketplace.auth0.com/) has what you need to handle everything from consent management to business process software integrations. The protections and extensibility we offer is a key factor in our scalability. 

When the time comes to expand across borders, Auth0 is ready. We’re certified by a third party as compliant with the International Standards Organization (ISO) standards [ISO27001](https://www.iso.org/obp/ui/#iso:std:iso-iec:27001:ed-2:v1:en) and [ISO27018](https://www.iso.org/standard/61498.html) for handling information security and personally identifiable information (PII) as a cloud provider.

![Growing](https://images.ctfassets.net/23aumh6u8s0i/1sBMtrIri0sAw0OBkWE4QV/41d7fc8b0740ac05ec3c82145fd1478f/Latam06.jpg)

## Auth0 is the Identity Solution That Can Keep Up With The Growing LatAm Market

To provide your customers with a continuous, low-friction, and intuitive login flow requires a robust identity solution. Whether you’re scaling internationally or your growth plans call for staying closer to home, Auth0 can provide the IDaaS platform you need to maintain a great customer experience while ensuring the security and privacy of your customer data. And don’t worry if you’ve already started an identity project and hit a stumbling block, [our experts can help](https://auth0.com/contact-us). 

<include src="asides/AboutAuth0" />

Can Your Identity Solution Grow With Your Company?

Why adding more developers to an identity project doesn’t always work out as intended

Without identity, digital business can’t happen. If you don’t know who’s logging in, you can’t be sure what access to give them. Without a solid identity solution, you’re leaving your front door open, which often leads to [data breaches](https://portswigger.net/daily-swig/brazil-reaches-towards-cybersecurity-maturity).

The Latin American technology market is booming. According to a [study by IDB Lab](https://publications.iadb.org/publications/english/document/Tecnolatinas-2021-The-LAC-Startup-Ecosystem-Comes-of-Age.pdf), the value of the tech-enabled startup market in the region has multiplied 32 times in the last decade, reaching a value of $221 billion in 2020. The increased speed of digital transformation and the expansion of existing markets can lead to business project priorities becoming muddled. 

In the rush to get a new site online or to integrate the systems of a recently acquired company, some organizations opt to build their own identity management tools in-house. Others keep their development teams focused on their core product or service while outsourcing identity to an [identity as a service (IDaaS)](https://auth0.com/blog/what-is-idaas/) provider.

And still, others will start an in-house identity build only to discover that their development team is missing the specialized skills needed and the project quickly goes over budget or lacks required features. The build vs. buy dilemma is not a new one, but when it comes to the security and privacy of your customer data, Auth0 understands how important it is to get right. We also understand the intricacies of the Latin American market, our founders are Argentinian, and we [recently partnered with CLM](https://auth0.com/blog/auth0-expands-global-partner-network-in-latin-america-with-clm/) to expand our offerings and solidify our infrastructure for our customers in the region.

![Build vs. Buy: The Basics](https://images.ctfassets.net/23aumh6u8s0i/2kfjY0DfaQZ7j8eDcc6yeq/10c2c1d1bf2fa66727f854d8aa79c1a8/Latam03.jpg)

## Build vs. Buy: The Basics

Comparable to other software development projects, an identity platform can be designed and built by in-house developers, or a solution can be purchased and integrated into existing systems. And as with other projects, both options have their merits. Some reasons an organization may opt to build their own identity solution include:

* The ability to maintain tighter control over the software development lifecycle (SDLC). By using an in-house development team, the company maintains control of the entire process, from design to implementation.
* A custom-built solution can be supported by in-house IT teams. To limit access to potentially sensitive information, some organizations prefer to keep support for their tools with in-house teams.
* Keeping costs down. We’ll address this in greater detail later in this article, but many companies believe that it’s cheaper to do development in-house rather than purchase an out-of-the-box solution. This is especially true in regions with lower costs of living.

 
On the other side of this discussion, some of the top reasons companies might consider using an identity as a service (IDaaS) provider for their identity management solution are:

* Keeping speed-to-deployment times down. With the underlying platform pre-built, all that remains for your in-house teams to do is customize your identity solution to your specific needs, and you’re ready to deploy. With an extensible solution like Auth0, this often means a matter of weeks rather than months or years.
* Sustainable long-term support rests with the solution provider. Your development and support teams have their own sets of expertise; by using an IDaaS provider that includes ongoing support for their product, your teams can focus their efforts on your core product or service.
* Outsourcing development can reign in unforeseen costs. With a fixed initial purchase price and contracted ongoing subscription fees that are known ahead of time, costs remain stable with the IDaaS option. 

 
Beyond the basics of the [build vs. buy question](https://auth0.com/resources/whitepapers/build-vs-buy-evaluating-identity-management), there are some specific areas to consider when beginning an identity management project. An IDaaS solution should be scalable and extensible to meet your exact requirements. We’ll look at these factors in greater depth shortly. What’s key to remember now is that with these three aspects in place, your identity solution will be able to support your needs now as well as being ready to grow with your company. 

## What We Mean When We Say, “Quantity Doesn’t Always Equal Quality.”

Along with the booming tech market in Latin America has come a growing pool of development talent. Combined with the lower costs of living and wages possible, too often, this leads to companies mistakenly thinking that they can add more developers to a project in order to resolve issues. While this may work if the issue is one of more code needing to be written faster, for something as specific as identity management, it isn’t always the right solution.

Identity is complicated. A true identity expert will have spent years expanding their knowledge and honing their skills. Unless your developers are already identity specialists, putting more of them on the task of building a solid identity management system won’t ensure that the end product will be secure; it will simply mean the end product gets built faster. Auth0 has been doing nothing but identity since 2013, and in those years, we’ve built up the expertise to be your trusted identity partner.

Let your people focus their attention and effort on what they do best — building and supporting your core product or service. By bringing in the identity pros at Auth0, you enable your teams to do just that while also ensuring that you have a robust identity platform keeping your data secure and your customers happy. 

## It’s Never Too Late: Making A Clean Transition To IDaaS

Here’s a scenario we see frequently: a company decides to build its own identity management system. They’ve put their best developers on the job, and things have been going smoothly for several months. Then they realize there’s a particular feature needed, like multi-factor authentication or biometric integration, or maybe they found a security issue with the way data is transferred between systems. Whatever the cause, the team is stuck.

Management in this scenario has two basic options: they can tell the team to get back to work and sort it out, or they can press pause on the project until a solution is discovered. While the former may be tempting, it’s the latter option that is more likely to lead to a successful solution being found, especially if at this point they call in an IDaaS provider.

Our scalable and extensible identity platform provides the underlying code, and your team can then use their talents to customize the solution to fit the organization’s specific needs. The scalability and extensibility offered by Auth0 will grow with the company no matter how many acquisitions they make or how many new markets they enter. And our no-, low-, and pro-code options make that customization easy for any development team.

## Find The Right Mix of Security, Privacy, and Customer Experience

That mix of security, privacy, and customer experience we talk about is provided by an identity solution that offers scalability, extensibility, and customization. At Auth0, we provide the platform; you tailor it for your needs. Auth0 is built by developers for developers using open standards. That means we play well with others via our robust marketplace of integrations, our application programming interfaces (APIs), and our extensive software development kit (SDK) libraries.

Scalability is easy with Auth0, often a matter of changing a handful of settings. And if the startup you acquire uses cloud infrastructure and you’re on-prem, Auth0 can provide the bridge to close that gap. One log-in can take your users to whichever app they need, no matter how it’s hosted.

We provide a broad marketplace of integrations so you can connect all relevant line-of-business apps with your Auth0 instance. Combine that with our APIs and SDK libraries, and Auth0 can be extended to meet your needs. And we do it while maintaining high-level security for your customer data.

We offer three paths to build out your identity management solution: no-code, low-code, or pro-code. So no matter your situation, there’s a way for you to find the right mix of security, privacy, and customer experience for your organization and your customers.

![Think Big](https://images.ctfassets.net/23aumh6u8s0i/34m9kBnH3jn3XyvwmhUikO/24a5a3340d828b548c6f433f524cecf6/Latam02.jpg)

## What All This Identity Talk Means For You: Think Big

To claim your piece of the expanding tech market in Latin America, you need the right infrastructure in place. Ensuring your identity needs are met before you move forward with expansion plans is a great first step. Using an IDaaS like Auth0 ensures you have the security, privacy, and customer experience tailored to your needs now and well into the future.

And bypassing the identity tasks to us, your development team is free to focus all of their efforts and resources on continuing to build and maintain your core products and services. Ensuring your business can continue to grow without an outdated or insecure identity solution holding you back.

For more information on how Auth0 can help your organization thrive, read our recent report on the [State of Secure Identity](https://auth0.com/resources/whitepapers/state-of-security-identity-report), or our whitepaper on the [Auth0 Identity Maturity Framework](https://auth0.com/resources/whitepapers/the-auth0-identity-maturity-framework). Then [reach out](https://auth0.com/contact-us) to one of our Latin American experts to continue the conversation.

<include src="asides/AboutAuth0" />

Building an Identity Solution — Quantity Doesn’t Equal Quality

dean-scontras

Dean Scontras has spent the last two decades in public sector sales roles at high-growth cybersecurity and technology companies, including Duo Security, MobileIron, and Hewlett-Packard. Currently, Dean sits on the advisory board of Advanced Technology Academic Research Center (ATARC) and DiversifyIT. Prior to joining Auth0, he served as the vice president of U.S. Public Sector at Duo Security (acquired by Cisco), leading federal, state, local, and education sales initiatives, alongside securing the company’s successful FedRAMP certification.

VP, State and Local Government and Education, Okta and Auth0

Dean Scontras

Evaluating Identity Management in the Public Sector

Recently, I attended a National Association of State Chief Information Officers (NASCIO)

Committee meeting where one state gave an impressive presentation on how they built their own [Identity-as-a-Service (IDaaS)](https://auth0.com/blog/what-is-idaas/) for all of their citizens. It was a massive undertaking that took the better part of four years and required buy-in from the highest levels of the state government.

Not for the faint of heart, but to this state’s credit, they did it.

Enrollment is up, and applications have been added. However, even by their own admission, if they had to do it again, they may have chosen to buy or consider a hybrid approach (build and buy).

A modern state identity solution like Auth0 provides the option for governments to do both: build and buy.

## The Rise of Citizen Digital Services

Current and potential customers sometimes cite future uncertainty as one reason they choose to keep IDaaS development in-house, but digital citizen services are here to stay. [NASCIO recently affirmed in their 2021 State CIO Top 10 Priorities](https://www.nascio.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/NASCIO_CIOTopTenPriorities.pdf) that digital citizen services, Identity and Access Management (IAM), and the shift to cloud are all top priorities.

As a result, [Customer Identity and Access Management (CIAM)](https://auth0.com/blog/what-is-ciam/) solutions and statewide Single Sign On (SSO) for citizens should remain top priorities to work towards for state IT. In fact, as the digital natives age, the demand for digital citizen services will only _continue_ to grow, as will the expectations for competitive customer experiences.

The public expects to interact with the government the way they do with other websites and applications like their bank. There is a growing understanding of this among state governments and other public sector institutions. Subsequently, those who opt to build IDaaS solutions from scratch will be forced to adapt, support, and scale with the speed and agility of private SaaS companies.

But building the solution is just the beginning.

## Customizable CIAM for Custom Applications

Departments that [opt to build their own CIAM](https://auth0.com/resources/whitepapers/build-vs-buy-evaluating-identity-management) solutions will have to keep up with changes, emerging threats, breaches, and outages, along with emerging compliance and privacy requirements; then there’s the need to keep pace with citizen demand for new features as the internet evolves.

In government administrations that change frequently, CIOs leave. The potential of the solution becoming antiquated or obsolete is real. By having a modern state identity solution as at least part of your solution, you can still private label it as your own while using a pre-built solution that can be quickly picked up by a new development team.

Cloud-based identity solutions like Auth0 provide an elastic identity engine that can expand or recede. It provides a nice hedge against the future, just in case.

Another reservation expressed with the “build” approach is the ‘speed to service’. How quickly can state governments make applications available to the general public by building them versus partnering with custom IDaaS solution companies like Auth0?

Typically, one of the most critical parts of a project is wiring up applications for identity. States can take months, even years developing their own IDaaS solutions and slow the rollout of their applications. This can mean citizens are not getting access to crucial services for long periods of time.

## Offloading CIAM to Expedite Secure Application Deployment

With a buyable solution like Auth0, state administrations are able to roll out digital services in days versus years for a custom-built in-house solution. The back-end of Auth0’s solutions are pre-built, allowing teams to customize quickly with low to no-code inputs from a development team to get a new release deployed faster.

This is Auth0’s sweet spot: our extensibility. The right buyable CIAM solution is customizable and designed to offload the burden of custom configuration for developers. This enables government organizations to move faster and get citizen technology shipped sooner without compromising on the security of critical information.

Buyable CIAM solutions like Auth0 will produce the seamlessly secure customer experience that citizens have come to expect from digital portals while offering developers and IT teams the customization and extensibility they need to get projects out the door sooner.

To learn more about CIAM for government, [start with our whitepaper](https://auth0.com/resources/whitepapers/how-identity-forms-a-foundation-for-digital-govenrment) then get in touch with our identity specialists to continue the conversation.

Finally, it is our opinion there is a vast difference between those who build IT identity solutions meant for the workforce and those who build them for customers and citizens. CIAM solutions often require a great amount of extensibility and flexibility, whereas off-the-shelf third-party applications for the workforce are plug and play.

Perhaps the answer is not build or buy, but both. Use Auth0 as part of your build scenario, if only as a hedge against the future.

State Identity Solutions: Build? Buy? Or Both?

richard-marr

GM, APAC

Richard Marr

A robust CIAM solution helps you find the right balance of security without sacrificing customer experience

A recent PwC study found that [32% of the public will abandon a company](https://www.pwc.com/us/en/advisory-services/publications/consumer-intelligence-series/pwc-consumer-intelligence-series-customer-experience.pdf) after a single bad customer experience. What if that frustrating experience is your login? If you turn up the security measures too high, customers won’t bother navigating the hurdles to create an account or log in to an existing one. The flip side is if you dial the security down too far in favor of an easy login flow, malicious actors will take advantage of the fact that while the majority of people (91%) know reusing passwords is a bad practice, [66% admit to doing it anyway](https://www.logmeininc.com/newsroom/press-release/2020/lastpass-psychology-of-passwords-report-reveals-91-of-people-know-password-reuse-is-insecure-yet-two-thirds-do-it-anyway). Those numbers are courtesy of a study conducted by LogMeIn, makers of the password manager LastPass.

Login pages are often the first point of interaction between customers and the companies they do business with. Of course, that means those login pages are often the first point of contact for malicious actors, as well. For any company doing business online, there’s a line to walk between keeping data secure and providing a low-friction login experience for legitimate customers. [Customer Identity and Access Management (CIAM)](https://auth0.com/blog/what-is-ciam/) is the solution that allows for successful navigation of this line.

From a business standpoint, having too few security measures leaves you open to regulatory penalties should a data breach occur and the high financial costs of recovering from a breach, not to mention the damage to your brand that can extend far beyond the recovery period. Too much security can result in lost conversions when customers abandon the process due to friction. A strong CIAM solution lets you consolidate the onboarding, organizing, and managing of user accounts — all while helping mitigate the chances of a breach with defensive measures like Bot Detection and brute force protection.

![CIAM](https://images.ctfassets.net/23aumh6u8s0i/2opPstgbMTWBqurQhYT22U/fbe55b99b77219db5cee29b29972a62a/CIAM_recorte1.png)

## User Account Flow and How CIAM Manages Each Stage

A robust CIAM platform provides you with an identity Single Source of Truth (SSoT). SSoT is a data organization framework that says it’s easier to protect data in one place rather than data in multiple siloed locations spread across multiple platforms (like on-prem and cloud). Beyond that, strong CIAM provides customers a single login window for all of your properties. Even if you’re expanding your presence and adding new tools and apps, users will only ever have to login once to access them all. CIAM provides similar ease-of-use solutions throughout the user account lifecycle.


### Account creation

When a new customer decides to create an account, they’re telling you that they trust you with their data and that they’re ready to become a customer. Rewarding them with easy, low-friction processes is key to showing them that their trust is well placed. A CIAM solution that offers multiple first-factor sign-on options, such as [passwordless](https://auth0.com/intro-to-iam/what-is-passwordless-authentication/), [biometrics](https://auth0.com/blog/3-critical-trends-in-biometric-authentication-in-2019/), or [single sign-on](https://auth0.com/blog/what-is-single-sign-on-a-non-developer-s-guide/) to create an account means they don’t have to create or reuse an existing password. This streamlines the customer experience while adding security by removing passwords from the login flow.


### Account maintenance

At this stage, automation is CIAM’s biggest benefit. Automated password resets, and the ability to combine accounts in cases where a person accidentally creates a duplicate reduces the backend workload on your team while keeping customer friction low. While such automatic password resets are one of the stronger benefits of a CIAM solution, it’s important to note that malicious attackers often seek to exploit these recovery flows. These attacks can be thwarted by having strong security in place that offers a range of protections, including Bot Detection and the ability to spot suspicious IP throttling.


### Account end-of-life

Should a user abandon their account, you need a process in place that deactivates these accounts and eventually deletes them. This will prevent those credentials from being used in future attack scenarios, as well as keeping your user account database clean and free of dead accounts.


## The Business Impact of Data Security

There are a variety of attack vectors available to malicious actors once account credentials are stolen. We go into more detail in a [whitepaper](https://auth0.com/resources/whitepapers/secure-ciam) on this topic, but what follows is a brief summary of the most prevalent of these vectors.


### Credential stuffing attacks

When an attacker takes a list of breached credentials and runs all of these combinations through a login flow until they find a combination that unlocks the login box, it’s called [credential stuffing](https://auth0.com/blog/what-is-credential-stuffing/). These attacks prove efficient for the attackers due to password reuse. Lists of breached username/password combinations are available on the dark web, making credential stuffing attacks a low-effort way to instigate a breach. 


### Business email compromise (BEC) attacks

Usually beginning with spearphishing emails sent in the guise of a trusted partner account, BEC attacks are targeted at busy executives with the goal of obtaining a money transfer to an account owned by the attacker. Once again, breached credentials often play a key role in these attacks.


### Bot-based brute force attacks

Bot attacks can take several forms. Most often, they are automated credential stuffing or what are called swarm attacks: when a malicious actor uses automation tools to flood a site with traffic either to cause the site to crash in a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack or to buy up available retail stock to inflate the price on the aftermarket.

The business impact of these attacks can be dramatic, ranging from the financial impact of lost business to increased churn due to customers losing trust in the business to long-lasting damage to brand reputation. For these reasons, finding the right balance of[ security and customer experience](https://auth0.com/blog/digital-success-through-customer-identity-and-access-management/) is a business priority. 

![CIAM](https://images.ctfassets.net/23aumh6u8s0i/2cpWz1sTXnXL7Da3rGAWJ0/e96fb924653277fe241211e3e15fa396/CIAM_recorte2.png)

## Data Security Is a Moving Target

According to the 2020 edition of the IBM/Ponemon Institute’s Cost of a Data Breach report, lost business after a data breach averages out to more than [$1.5 million per breach](https://www.ibm.com/security/digital-assets/cost-data-breach-report/#/). That works out to approximately 40% of the total average cost of a data breach, which the same report puts at $3.86 million.

PwC has found that [87% of consumers](https://www.pwc.com/us/en/services/consulting/cybersecurity-privacy-forensics/library/global-digital-trust-insights.html) will take their business elsewhere if they feel a company is not treating their data with due care. The takeaway is to be open and honest with your customers about your data use policies. After collecting their consent to use their information, tell them what you’re using it for, how you’re caring for it, and what your policy is regarding data destruction when you’re done with it. This transparency will go a long way toward mitigating these potential impacts.

Data security needs are in constant flux with changing regulatory requirements, evolving attack vectors, and increasingly data-savvy consumers. Auth0 research has found that [83% of apps in development will require authentication](https://auth0.com/resources/whitepapers/state-app-assembly-2020), yet only 58% of companies are availing themselves of the Identity-as-a-Service (IDaaS) option. Let our experts keep up with those ever-evolving security needs and handle what they do best, identity, while yours do what they do best, creating and enhancing your core product. 

A company’s digital identity is of increasing importance in today’s crowded marketplace, and managing customer experience from the login page is key to creating the trusting relationships needed to thrive. If it’s time for your business to pay more attention to your access management solution, [get in touch with our team of identity specialists](https://auth0.com/contact-us) today to start the conversation.

<include src="asides/AboutAuth0" />

CIAM: Balancing Security with Customer Experience

df6c864847fba9687d962cb80b482764?size=200 avatar

df6c864847fba9687d962cb80b482764?size=200

Martin Gontovnikas, a.k.a Gonto, is a software engineer at heart who moved to the ‘dark side’ and became VP of Marketing at Auth0. He considers himself lucky to have found a way to combine his two passions and apply his engineering thinking model to marketing. Gonto’s analytical thinking is a huge driver of his data-driven approach to marketing strategy and experimental design. He is based in the Bay area, and in his spare time, can be found eating gourmet food at the best new restaurants, visiting every local brewery he can find, or traveling the globe in search of new experiences.

Former SVP of Marketing and Growth at Auth0

Martin Gontovnikas

Developer-Friendly Solution Removes the Complexity of Authentication and Authorization for App Developers

**SEATTLE, Sep 17, 2014 (BUSINESS WIRE)** -- [**Auth0**](https://auth0.com), an identity-as-a-service solution, announced today it has secured $2.4 million in seed funds led by Bessemer Venture Partners with participation from K9 Ventures, Portland Seed Fund and NXTP Labs. The company’s service is already in use in 124 countries by more than 8,000 developers and IT managers in both small and large enterprises in the software, financial, media, security and consumer sectors. Some of Auth0’s larger customers include [*Schneider Electric*](http://www.schneider-electric.com/ww/en/), the global specialist in energy management, [*MindJet*](https://www.mindjet.com/), the leading innovation management and collaborative project management platform, [*Allegion*](http://www.allegion.com/corp/en/index.html), the leading provider of security solutions for homes and businesses around the world, and [*Berkshire Hathaway Travel Protection*](https://www.bhtp.com/), Berkshire Hathaway's travel insurance arm.

*“We’re a company founded by developers for developers. We created Auth0 because we are identity and security experts that are frustrated with the unnecessary complexity of integrating identity management into apps and APIs,”* said Jon Gelsey, Chief Executive Officer at Auth0. *“Since our launch, we have seen tremendous traction and Bessemer’s investment allows us to leverage its market-leading enterprise security and SaaS expertise to continue to grow the business.”*

Auth0 removes the complexity of authentication and authorization for developers. Instead of spending days or weeks writing complex and unfamiliar code, many identity scenarios can be solved with just a few lines of code to invoke Auth0’s service. Developers can implement highly secure and robust solutions, without requiring deep expertise in the complexities of authentication and authorization.

*“In the same way Twilio democratized access to SMS and voice communications, Auth0 developed an identity service to eliminate the growing complexity of authentication and authorization for developers,”* said David Cowan, Partner at Bessemer Venture Partners. *“Auth0 has the dream team in authentication security, which is why developers are so quickly adopting their API as the de facto way to do logins."*


The Auth0 solution allows any application or API running on any device, OS or software stack to authenticate with any identity provider. From the simplest app in the store to the most sophisticated enterprise software solution, Auth0 enables individual developers and IT managers to quickly and easily implement complex identity authentication scenarios.

*“We took a strategic, calculated bet on Auth0,”* said James Gardner, SVP of Product at Mindjet. *“By using Auth0's sophisticated identity infrastructure -- rather than building it ourselves -- we were able to assign two, full-time software engineers to developments directly related to Mindjet's core value proposition, which resulted in higher revenue while saving us a great deal of money.”*

The company also announced it has hired Gianpaolo Carraro as Vice President of Sales and Marketing. Mr. Carraro joins the company from Microsoft where he held executive roles in sales, marketing, and developer evangelism for the past twelve years. Auth0 will use the new funds to hire additional developers and add more features to its service. They will also invest in sales and marketing to build brand awareness and grow its customer base.

<include src="asides/AboutAuth0" />

Auth0 Identity-as-a-Service Solution Secures $2.4 Million in Early Funding Led by Bessemer Venture Partners

Auth0 replaces in-house authentication solution to support rapid global adoption of tax automation and technology solutions

**BELLEVUE, Wash. – Jan. 26, 2021** – The [Auth0](https://auth0.com/) Identity Platform, a product unit within Okta, today announced that it has been selected as the authentication provider for [Vertex](https://www.vertexinc.com/), Inc. (Nasdaq: VERX), a pioneer in tax automation and a leading global provider of indirect tax software and solutions. Having recently [completed an IPO](https://www.vertexinc.com/company/news/vertex-announces-pricing-initial-public-offering), Vertex will use Auth0’s identity and authentication solutions to manage and secure access to the Vertex platform.

Vertex helps more than 4,000 customers across 130 countries worldwide simplify tax complexities and digitally advance their business. The Vertex platform provides a comprehensive, integrated suite of tax technology solutions, including tax determination, compliance and reporting, data management, and document management. Vertex serves more than half of the Fortune 500 companies, along with the top tax, accounting, and consulting firms. 
 
To aid the company’s strategic priorities and digital transformation efforts, Vertex replaced its in-house identity management solution with the Auth0 identity platform. Auth0’s solutions help secure the authentication and authorization to Vertex’s applications&mdash;which help businesses efficiently manage end-to-end tax operations for customer transaction events&mdash;and help Vertex manage its user authentication experience. 
 
“The rapid changes taking place in today’s global business, technology, and regulatory environments demand intelligent solutions that are secure and scalable,” said Steve Wasserman, Principal Architect at Vertex, Inc. “Identity management is a critical component to any transformation process, and having a proven identity expert like Auth0 allows us to confidently serve our growing customer base.”

“As a trusted leader in tax technology, Vertex is instrumental in calculating the tax for businesses while removing the many hurdles surrounding tax obligations and global commerce,” said Ghazi Masood, SVP of Americas for Auth0. “The security of these transactions is paramount, and Vertex understands the role authentication plays in that process. We look forward to aiding the Vertex team and its customers with their digital priorities to drive long-term success.”

<include src="asides/AboutAuth0" />

### Media Contacts
Auth0 Global Communications 
[press@auth0.com](mailto:press@auth0.com) 

Matter for Auth0 
[auth0@matternow.com](mailto:auth0@matternow.com)

Vertex Selects Auth0 to Help Businesses Deliver Secure Tax Solutions

randy_nasson

Director of Product Management for Customer Identity Cloud (formerly Auth0) in our Identity and Access Management (IAM) domain. I joined Auth0 in 2018 and assembled a world-class IAM product team dedicated to delivering customer value and enabling developers to quickly implement secure, robust, and seamless identity solutions. In addition to my current work with CIC, I regularly work with our Auth0 Lab team on greenfield initiatives and with our Strategic and Technical Partner teams on opportunities to drive revenue.

Director, Product Management (IAM)

Randy Nasson

Delight users while providing a secure CIAM solution for accessing applications and services

## Summary

* Refresh tokens [can be effectively used for maintaining a seamless user experience](https://auth0.com/blog/securing-single-page-applications-with-refresh-token-rotation/) in browser-based apps without suffering the limitations imposed by ITP2
* Configuring absolute lifetimes for refresh tokens helps reduce the risk of using RTs in single-page applications
* Inactivity lifetime enables refresh token lifetimes to be extended as long as the end-user interacts with the client within the configured period, resulting in less end-user friction
* **Auth0 now provides both absolute and inactivity lifetimes for refresh tokens, along with more secure refresh token defaults, as of December 16, 2020**
 

## Balancing Security and User Experience

Most businesses want to afford a friction-free experience for end-users when using their applications. Requiring people to manually enter credentials every time they visit a commerce site or open an app can yield frustration and hurt the business bottom line. A common request in business-to-consumer (B2C) industries is to only require users to log in once and then to never require them to log in again unless they are explicitly logged out, either by choice or necessity.

The practice of using long-lived [refresh tokens](https://auth0.com/blog/refresh-tokens-what-are-they-and-when-to-use-them/) paired with short-lived Access Tokens is a common solution to delivering an uninterrupted experience, particularly in native mobile apps. With additional security capabilities such as [Refresh Token Rotation](https://auth0.com/blog/securing-single-page-applications-with-refresh-token-rotation/) and [Automatic Reuse Detection](https://auth0.com/blog/securing-single-page-applications-with-refresh-token-rotation/#Automatic-Reuse-Detection), refresh tokens can safely be used in Single Page Applications (SPAs) to afford continuous access on the web.

![Refresh Token](https://images.ctfassets.net/23aumh6u8s0i/6lBzS4ElN5ZEULvNM50Hvi/1a84f912b03d26661286ec71b4016f71/01-image-refresh-token)

## Refresh Token Expiration

However, a refresh token is considered a powerful artifact in identity management. If a refresh token is leaked or stolen, it could be used to acquire a new Access Token. As such, the [OAuth 2.0 Best Current Practices (BCP)](https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-oauth-security-topics-14#section-4.12.2) states that refresh tokens **should** expire if the application (client) is inactive for too long, particularly when used in Public Clients (a client that cannot secure its own credentials, such as a native mobile app). This means that refresh tokens should expire at some point in time, but that expiration can be based on activity and not merely an arbitrary point in the future.

When the refresh token expires, it can no longer be used to get a new Access Token. The user will be required to re-authenticate the next time they use the application. More importantly, an attacker’s window for using a leaked token is limited. 

But, what about the business desire for only wanting the end-user to log in once and not again thereafter? For SPAs, this can still be afforded within the OAuth 2.0 BCP guidance provided that the end-user’s activity in the application remains consistent.

Let’s consider an example: A media company publishes content on a regular basis that is only available to authenticated subscribers. In addition, the company sells subscriptions and related goods (books, print media, access to premium video content, etc.) using stored payment methods associated with the account. 

In this scenario, the website is a SPA with Auth0 as the authorization server, and refresh tokens are used to overcome the session limitations incurred by ITP2 or similar privacy mechanisms. Because there is sensitive information in the account, maintaining an indefinite application session is not ideal.

Leveraging absolute lifetimes, end-users can be required to log in again after a predetermined period of time. But that experience is not optimal for the business or the end-user. Requiring re-authentication creates friction between the user and the content or purchases. What if the user could remain logged in as long as they were active in the application on a regular basis, for example, once every two weeks?

## Introducing Inactivity Lifetime

Unlike absolute lifetime, which expires a refresh token after a fixed period, inactivity lifetime extends the expiration period each time the client uses a refresh token to get a new access token. Using the example above, this effectively preserves the seamless user experience as long as there is an activity within the inactivity lifetime.

![Introducing Inactivity Lifetime](https://images.ctfassets.net/23aumh6u8s0i/6vutURQweArCulYsO5eBvL/f54e0ef9f358058bde3b185c474ab814/04-at-expiration-1-day-flow)

As of today, both absolute and inactivity lifetimes for refresh tokens are available for all Auth0 customers hosted in our cloud environment and will be available in December 2020 for private cloud customers. This enables you to configure refresh token lifetimes based on your own app usage data, for example, by evaluating your application log data to determine how often users return to your app so that people who use applications regularly can have that period extended as long as usage remains consistent. 

Auth0 makes it easy to configure refresh token lifetimes using the [Auth0 Management API](https://auth0.com/docs/api/management/v2#!/Clients/post_clients), our [Deploy CLI](https://auth0.com/docs/extensions/deploy-cli-tool), or the Auth0 Dashboard.

![Auth0 Management API](https://images.ctfassets.net/23aumh6u8s0i/4P5VvuP2z41wvUoBDlRzvH/840a1ebbbf639eb0827ad62b4ab645c2/05-refresh-token-expiration)

Inactivity lifetime can be used in all supported refresh token flows and in conjunction with Refresh Token Rotation.

## Using Inactivity and Absolute Lifetimes Together

Both inactivity and absolute lifetimes can be configured on a per-application basis, enabling you to craft experiences to suit the expected usage of your applications.

Setting absolute lifetimes for refresh tokens ensures that refresh tokens cannot be used to retrieve a new access token after the specified period. For example, if you set the absolute lifetime to 30 days, the refresh token issued to the application can be used for up to 30 days from its issuance to retrieve a new access token. If you are leveraging Refresh Token Rotation, the absolute lifetime [applies to the entire token family](https://auth0.com/docs/tokens/refresh-tokens/refresh-token-rotation#automatic-reuse-detection). After the lifetime expires, the user will be required to re-authenticate.

You can also use a combination of absolute and inactivity lifetimes to afford an uninterrupted user experience for much longer durations, provided that the user remains active within the inactivity lifetime. For example, you can set the absolute lifetime to 365 days and the inactivity lifetime to 14 days. This would allow a user who was active in your application at least once every two weeks to continuously stay logged in until the absolute lifetime expires.

You can also use an inactivity lifetime _without_ an absolute lifetime in a similar manner to achieve the effect of never having to log in again as long as the user remains active within the inactivity lifetime (and the user never explicitly logs out).

![Auth0 Management API](https://images.ctfassets.net/23aumh6u8s0i/1og3ppkzZWZlMEXh1NNqLM/c2f2998f7509d6568fd87ca40622fdcf/06-refresh-token-expiration-2)

## Guidance & Defaults

As part of Auth0’s continued commitment to securing applications and protected resources, we’ve updated default refresh token settings for new applications as follows.

### Confidential Clients

Confidential clients, such as machine-to-machine applications or traditional web applications that can securely store client credentials and can, therefore, prove that requests are coming from the client and not an illegitimate actor. As such, when refresh tokens are enabled, for confidential clients, default settings are optimized for convenience as follows: 

![Confidential Clients](https://images.ctfassets.net/23aumh6u8s0i/3ZABGcvqKpo7NIanSD1v4e/c83ca317f6483ccae212a9ac2db827fb/07-confidential-clients)

### Public Clients (Native Apps)

Because Public Clients, such as native mobile applications, cannot securely store client credentials and are susceptible to other attack vectors when refresh tokens are enabled for public clients, the default settings are optimized for security, as follows: 

![Public Clients](https://images.ctfassets.net/23aumh6u8s0i/5sUFHqXRJ1OQZnb4MvMOMu/62b5e02b574bbe4c1b74cfee434d628e/08-public-clients)

### SPAs

Until recently, refresh tokens were not recommended for use with SPAs because browsers are more vulnerable to token leakage than native applications. Leveraging Refresh Token Rotation, the risk of using refresh tokens in SPAs is lowered. Nevertheless, Auth0 recommends that SPAs use refresh tokens with Absolute lifetimes specified and sets the following defaults when refresh tokens are enabled for SPAs:

![SPAs](https://images.ctfassets.net/23aumh6u8s0i/1S9d6u2w8dgSZ4D3cEpwIa/b0d00b921376cf6ec28bb86ac5f95145/09-spas)

## Let’s Get Started

As of December 16, 2020, both absolute and inactivity lifetimes for refresh tokens are available for all Auth0 customers hosted in our cloud environment and will be available in December 2020 for private cloud customers. You can read more about refresh token expiration, absolute lifetimes, and inactivity lifetimes and how to configure them for use in your applications in the [Auth0 documentation](https://auth0.com/docs/tokens/refresh-tokens/configure-refresh-token-expiration). We hope that you find this new capability helpful for balancing user experience with added security.

Secure the applications that you care about. But do it in a way that delights the people who use them.

Achieving a Seamless User Experience with Refresh Token Inactivity Lifetimes

andrea-chiarelli

I have over 20 years of experience as a software engineer and technical author. Throughout my career, I've used several programming languages and technologies for the projects I was involved in, ranging from C# to JavaScript, ASP.NET to Node.js, Angular to React, SOAP to REST APIs, etc.

In the last few years, I've been focusing on simplifying the developer experience with Identity and related topics, especially in the .NET ecosystem.

Principal Developer Advocate

Andrea Chiarelli

Learn how clickjacking attacks implement visual tricks to capture users' clicks, and how you can prevent them by applying client-side and server-side solutions.

Clickjacking Attacks and How to Prevent Them

ghazi-masood

I'm a seasoned business leader with nearly a 25 year track record in Sales running and managing teams of all sizes working in leadership positions for world class organizations.  Nowadays, you can find me at Auth0 leading all aspects of Revenue growth  for the Americas business.

Auth0 Vice President and General Manager, Americas.

Ghazi Masood

A customizable Identity and Access Management (IAM) solution is key to improving CX in mixed environments.

## Every Environment Is a Mixed Environment

Software implementations are often discussed in terms of “[build vs. buy](https://auth0.com/resources/whitepapers/build-vs-buy-evaluating-identity-management),” meaning that for each functionality desired in the tech stack, an organization needs to decide whether to develop the functionality in-house (build) or go with a third-party solution (buy). The latter essentially means entrusting the functionality, whether that’s team communications or identity and access management (IAM), to a dedicated expert.

But what if your environment comprises both built and bought solutions? For many companies, particularly at the enterprise level, the build vs. buy thinking doesn’t necessarily capture their experience. Instead, they’re working with legacy architecture that’s a highly customized combination of purchased and built-to-spec apps. Sometimes the reality is that, in the words of one CISO, “every environment is a mixed environment.”

## IAM Alleviates Pain

In a mixed environment, ensuring a frictionless customer experience can be a challenge. Having more applications in your architecture creates more opportunities for friction to disrupt the user experience. And now that identity is disseminated across so many different platforms and devices, with users needing the flexibility to log in anywhere, from any device, it’s more important than ever to support [federated identity](https://auth0.com/blog/why-auth0-b2b-federation-is-your-secret-weapon-for-enterprise/). But how can you ensure that you’re prepared to solve the constantly-shifting identity challenges presented by distributed and mixed environments?

IAM lightens the burden on companies struggling to manage identity in mixed environments. Implementing IAM empowers companies to increase security, work more efficiently, and deliver a painless customer experience regardless of tomorrow’s fresh challenges and unforeseen pain points. 

An identity-as-a-service provider like Auth0 manages authentication across all of your applications, so the login experience is both seamless and secure. A flexible IAM solution gives your team the access and insight they need to accelerate innovation, deliver more value to users, and strengthen your security posture — not just in response to the identity challenges you’re encountering now but those you’ll encounter in a year or five years. 

## Customization Is the Key

To address today’s rapidly evolving use cases, you need to add modern, greenfield functionality to your tech stack. Companies often add that functionality through third-party microservice providers: cloud-based software-as-a-service (SaaS) companies like Salesforce, ZenDesk, or Trello. At the same time, your legacy environment is powering your business, so while you might see the benefits of moving completely to the cloud, you may not be ready for the disruption of a full-scale cloud migration.

Fortunately, customization is the middle ground that can alleviate much of the pain you feel without creating additional headaches by forcing you into a migration strategy that’s not right for your situation. 

Auth0 powers customizations that integrate easily with your legacy system, driving revenue and allowing you time to adjust your strategy and reach consensus before moving forward with full-scale digital transformation. The right IAM solution helps you minimize disruption for users and customers during replatforming and other transitions, so you can minimize turnover and limit missed opportunities.

## Use Identity to Bring Business Logic Into Focus 

The process of implementing an identity strategy clarifies what your company needs to do. Put a different way, to make your identity strategy work; you need to understand the structure and needs of your business at a deep level. Implementing IAM creates opportunities for discussion that brings business logic into sharper focus and allows you to build innovation into your company’s DNA.

Building a product that is as flexible, extensible, customizable, and responsive to change as you need it to be also create the opportunity to take this same approach to higher-level conversations. When leadership sets lofty business goals, you can execute on these goals quickly, equipped with an identity solution that speeds time-to-market (TTM).

## Real-World Example: Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG)

Let’s look at an example of an enterprise environment where a flexible IAM solution helped mitigate the pain of a mixed environment that encompassed multiple different apps — and presented multiple challenges.

Formed in 1998, [the Bluetooth SIG](https://auth0.com/case-studies/bluetooth-sig/) is the not-for-profit trade association that oversees Bluetooth® technology. In support of more than 34,000 member companies, the Bluetooth SIG facilitates the collaboration of its members to create new and enhanced specifications that expand the technology, drives global interoperability via a world-class product qualification program, and grows the brand by increasing the awareness, understanding, and adoption of Bluetooth technology.

Bluetooth SIG needed a modern identity solution with single sign-on (SSO) to support all of the company’s homegrown and third-party SaaS apps. They had to be able to implement the solution while keeping the existing platform operating and mapping a path for full migration in the future. It was also essential to establish user roles and access to ensure proper protection for confidential information.

Auth0 fulfilled all of Bluetooth SIG’s requirements. Our solution was easy to implement and allowed the Bluetooth SIG team to add SSO and modern authentication. Without disrupting the legacy system, a migration plan was developed and carried out. Implementation of Auth0 took days, compared with the months it would have taken to implement an in-house platform. 

Top-tier documentation with detailed code samples helped Bluetooth SIG engineers get up to speed quickly on their modern identity solution. Bluetooth SIG and Auth0’s developer success engineers worked together to develop a proof of concept showcasing the platform’s capabilities. Ultimately, Auth0’s full suite of technology, documentation, and expert support gave Bluetooth SIG the solution they were looking for.

## Support Business Processes With Software, Not the Other Way Around

Software should support your core business functions — not the other way around. With an [identity-as-a-service (IDaaS)](https://auth0.com/blog/what-is-idaas/) provider like Auth0, you’ll have the functionality and extensibility to accomplish what you need to without wasting time and resources on a solved problem. IAM is a rapidly evolving specialty in which the only constant is the change. That’s why an out-of-the-box identity solution or an in-house authentication platform can only take you so far. 

Auth0 believes in the business value of entrusting identity to an IDaaS provider, but we also understand the power of code. That’s why we feel an IDaaS+code approach gives you the best of both worlds: identity services managed by an easy-to-use service, plus the same customizability and control you’d have if you’d coded the entire solution from scratch. 

To learn more about how the right identity solution can provide enhanced data protection and a seamless customer experience in your mixed environment, [reach out to the team at Auth0](https://auth0.com/contact-us?place=blog%20post&type=link&text=contact%20us).

<include src="asides/AboutAuth0" />

How to Improve Customer Experience in Your Mixed Environment

auziros:mckenzie-mayer

Customer Identity (CIAM) Product Comms lead, driving collective storytelling across Okta and Auth0. Making technology accessible for everyone.

Customer Identity Product Comms Lead at Okta

McKenzie Mayer

Technology analyst firm KuppingerCole recognizes Signify for outstanding user experience

**LONDON – Oct. 21, 2020 –** The [Auth0](https://auth0.com/) Identity Platform, a product unit within Okta, today celebrates its valued customer, [Signify](https://www.signify.com/en-gb), makers of Philips Hue, as the winner of the prestigious KCLive Award: Customer Authentication at KuppingerCole Consumer Technology World 2020.

![Customer Authentication at KuppingerCole](https://images.ctfassets.net/23aumh6u8s0i/3pyMz2SYbkH2t7Asi76zkb/0028f286678377588f613a88e8c88f43/consumer_authentication)

Presented by KuppingerCole Analysts AG, the KCLive Awards honor outstanding projects, standards, or people in the field of identity management, cybersecurity, and artificial intelligence. Signify is being recognized for its use of Auth0 within Philips Hue to build trust and focus on innovation for several million users of the Hue Cloud, the IoT platform that allows consumers to control their home lighting system.

Manufacturing has long been about widgets and margins. But with Philips Hue, Signify now develops experiences on top of its consumer lighting at scale. This strategy required redeploying significant R&D engineering resources, including teams dedicated to maintaining Signify’s homegrown sign-in logic in the Google Cloud Platform. Signify freed up their developers to work on lighting innovation by replacing this component with Auth0. The team then easily fortified its Customer Identity and Access Management (CIAM) project with [Anomaly Detection](https://auth0.com/docs/anomaly-detection), an Auth0 feature that blocks suspicious login activity to protect customers from identity-related attacks.

“Advances in LED have given us the ability to make lights ‘smart,’ and there’s a lot more to explore when it comes to connected home lighting systems and the IoT,” said Etienne Bertou, principal cloud architect, Philips Hue at Signify. “With best-in-class authentication in place, we can focus on pushing the boundaries of innovation and bring new lighting experiences to market that improve consumer productivity, health, and entertainment.”

Auth0’s CIAM solution met all key objectives so that Signify’s R&D management and engineering no longer had to choose between being best-in-class in authentication or rapidly delivering roadmapped features that improve lighting experience for customers.

“Innovation is what happens when you can focus on prioritizing experiences – and authentication just works,” said Steven Rees-Pullman, SVP International at Auth0. “Secure, scalable lighting experiences from Signify are helping to make our lives safer and more enjoyable, businesses more productive, and cities more liveable. Many congratulations to Signify for this well-deserved award!”

Learn more about [Signify and Auth0 on our website](https://auth0.com/case-studies/signify/).

<include src="asides/AboutAuth0" />

### Media Contacts
McKenzie Mayer 
PR Manager, EMEA 
[press@auth0.com](mailto:press@auth0.com)

Auth0 Powers Signify’s Award-Winning Customer Authentication Solution

How Single Sign-on (SSO) streamlines authentication and what makes for a good SSO solution.

Everyone who uses the internet agrees that life would be better with fewer logins. For users, logging in is a hassle that interrupts whatever they were trying to do and forces them to remember their password. What's bad for user experience is doubly bad for businesses, because a frustrated user is more likely to walk away from a transaction or browse a website without logging in.

The solution for a world with fewer logins is single sign-on (SSO), which allows a user to log in once and automatically gain access to a suite of connected applications. Companies that implement single sign-on properly benefit from improved user experience and heightened security. Below, we'll explain how single sign-on works and the differences between a good SSO policy and a bad one.

## What Is Single Sign-On?

Single sign-on is a method of logging in that lets a user enter in their login credentials (usually a username and password) just once and automatically be logged into multiple websites or applications. Single sign-on is one element of identity and access management (IAM), which is the entire set of tools and protocols governing how users log in and gain access to data.

An SSO solution is like a library card. A library card lets you check out books from every branch in a library system instead of having to get a separate card and a separate account for each one. This makes life easier for patrons, who can now access books from all of the local branches instead of just one. And it makes things easier for the organization because they know how people are using their services (and who owes late fees). SSO operates according to the same principle, except instead of uniting the different library branches in a city, it unites different digital properties used by a single company.

![Single Sign-On](https://images.ctfassets.net/23aumh6u8s0i/K75jZ7ram6DqcgeRpdk5E/b63faf3f58df73ff601059244656a438/single-sign-on-info)

The most widely known customer-facing example of single sign-on is Google's G Suite. Users log in to their Gmail accounts, and when they navigate to Google Docs or YouTube, they're automatically logged in. While end-user authentication is the most widely known use case for SSO, its also used in business-to-employee (B2E) settings.

Some companies also use SSO for their employees, so a single set of credentials grants access to a set of applications. For instance, if an employee logs into their employee portal, they'll be immediately logged into Slack and Zoom with their employee ID.

SSO is a part of the broader concept of [federated identity management](https://auth0.com/blog/why-identity-federation-matters/), which allows for someone to use a single identity across multiple different systems. SSO refers specifically to a single login giving a user access to multiple properties that are still part of a single organization.

Federated identity, meanwhile, means using the same identity to log in to properties owned by multiple organizations. It's possible to have a federated identity that isn't a single sign-on. For instance, an app could enable social login (logging in with something like Facebook, Google, or Apple ID) but still only use that login for a single property.

## How Does Single Sign-on Work?

On a technical level, SSO works by having users give their credentials to the SSO solution instead of logging in directly to a website or app. The SSO solution, in turn, checks these user credentials with the company's authentication server (a database of credentials) or identity provider.

An identity provider is a service that stores and manages user identities on behalf of an application. For end users, common identity providers include Google and Facebook. [Enterprise identity providers](https://auth0.com/docs/connections/identity-providers-enterprise) include Microsoft Active Directory, Azure AD, LDAP, and G Suite. Users can log in using an account they've already created with a separate identity provider, which saves them from filling out a new registration form. Using an outside identity provider saves businesses from having to store this information themselves on an authentication server. That's a security advantage for businesses because having databases full of passwords can make them targets for hackers.

When the SSO solution confirms that a user is logging in with the correct credentials, it issues them a token. Then, when they go to a new page, the token confirms that they're already logged in and don't need to do so again. There are multiple ways this interaction can take place using Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML) or Open Authorization (OAuth). For our non-developer purposes, the primary difference between these two is that SAML is used to verify a user's identity (authentication), whereas OAuth controls what resources users are allowed to access (authorization).

Most SSO solutions also include single log-out (SLO), which means that logging out of one site automatically logs you out of the rest.

## Single Sign-on Challenges and Benefits

The right SSO solution can create more streamlined user experiences, improve analytics, and increase security. Despite this, SSO adoption has been relatively low, even among businesses that use other cloud-based identity solutions. According to a [2019 Bitglass report](https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20191105005310/en/Bitglass-2019-Cloud-Adoption-Report-Enterprise-Cloud), 86% of companies currently use cloud applications, but only 34% use single sign-on (SSO).

This slow adoption rate is due to security concerns and the technical challenges of implementing SSO in-house. Each of these issues deserves attention, but there are solutions for each.

### SSO security risks and solutions

With SSO, a user's login credentials act like a skeleton key that unlocks multiple applications. Unfortunately, the more doors a password opens, the more damage a hacker can do with it. That danger is greater for users who reuse their passwords. One of the biggest cybersecurity risks in recent years is [credential stuffing](https://auth0.com/blog/what-is-credential-stuffing/), in which hackers use credentials stolen in one data breach to hack into other sites. It's an effective tactic, precisely because many people use the same passwords for everything.

On the other hand, SSO can actually reduce the chance of compromised credentials because it reduces "password fatigue." The fewer passwords people have to create, the less likely they are to reuse old ones.

Still, the best way to ensure that SSO doesn't hurt security is to combine it with strong authentication protocols like [multifactor authentication (MFA)](https://auth0.com/learn/multifactor-authentication-customers/). MFA, also known as two-factor authentication (2FA), asks users to give additional credentials that prove who they are in the event of a suspicious login or which engaging in risky behaviors (such as accessing payment information).

Companies don't want to use MFA for every login: doing so will create too much friction for customers, so they need a customizable approach. Contextual MFA lets companies determine the situations in which to ask for more credentials. For instance, if a user is logging in on a new device, an MFA solution may ask them to confirm their identity. That may mean sending a verification code to their phone or email or using biometrics, such as a fingerprint.

![MFA](https://images.ctfassets.net/23aumh6u8s0i/iicHPmWM3HmnyEc2MPHBJ/3844cce0e03ebe9cd30b2f095f06d11a/manage-mfa-ss-43963efc4c)

The other critical element in keeping SSO safe is controlling session length (how long users stay logged in) based on risk. For example, a banking app might automatically log out users after a few minutes of inactivity. A video-streaming site, on the other hand, doesn't need to be so strict about access control and can allow for sessions that last for weeks before they ask users to verify their identities again.

### SSO implementation challenges and solutions

When companies try to design their own SSO solutions in-house, they run into some common and potentially expensive problems. For one thing, integrating identity across different types of directories is a challenge, especially for companies using legacy applications. Getting these applications to communicate is akin to trying to connect LEGO blocks with Lincoln Logs. Likewise, it's challenging to design an SSO solution that's compatible with different devices and operating systems, such as Android and IoS products.

Then there's the issue of user migration. Let's return to our library analogy and imagine that, until recently, all the local libraries kept their own databases of users, and now they're trying to combine them. This creates problems because some people have accounts at every branch and possibly have different information on file with each one. Migrating all that data into a single source of truth and correcting it as you go can be a huge headache.

That's why it's simpler and often more cost-effective for companies to use a third-party SSO solution instead of building one from scratch. With an outside SSO provider, integrations have already been solved, migration is simplified, and SSO can simply be plugged in and switched on.

![SSO Solution](https://images.ctfassets.net/23aumh6u8s0i/6MDhnlpJSVSBaFHs7Cpb2J/40794b467fc8ce1c707dd241497587f4/sso-integrations)

While some companies offer SSO as a stand-alone solution, it's usually part of a suite of services offered by an identity-as-a-service (IdaaS) company. The advantage of using an IDaaS provider for IAM is that it includes the tools you need to use SSO safely, like customizable MFA. Whether you're looking to implement SSO for your end users or your employees, the right IAM solution is the one that includes the integrations and customizability you need.

## The Right SSO Solution Helps Everybody

When an SSO solution has the right security safeguards, it can streamline the authentication process and lead to fewer headaches for all parties. People aren't overwhelmed by a ballooning number of user accounts, and businesses get fewer help-desk calls for lost passwords. It all depends on finding an SSO provider that handles a user's identity securely and efficiently.

<include src="asides/AboutAuth0" />

What Is Single Sign-On (A Non-developer's Guide)

5e074956ee8ba1fea26e30d28c190495?s=300 avatar

5e074956ee8ba1fea26e30d28c190495?s=300

Full stack developer creating content at Auth0. I love taking a deep dive into hard-to-understand concepts and creating content that makes them easier to grasp. In my free time you can usually find me reading, hanging out with my dogs, or curling in the squat rack.

Former Developer Content Manager

Holly Guevara

Learn what your identity solution is missing and some potential attack surfaces that could come along with it.

What Your Identity Solution Is Missing

john-brennan

John is an R&D Content Engineer at Auth0. He has nearly a decade’s experience in full-stack software development in a variety of environments, languages, and frameworks. He relishes the challenge of learning hard-to-grasp technical concepts and helping others understand them in a clear, concise manner. His current technical interests are in API design and scalability, Ruby on Rails, accessibility, single-page app architecture, and the ever-changing JavaScript ecosystem. When he's not working, John is usually cooking, doing creative writing, running, or wrangling a toddler.

R&D Content Engineer

John Brennan

Learn techniques for migrating your users from other identity solutions to Auth0

**TL;DR:** This tutorial will walk you through options for migrating users into Auth0, focusing specifically on the challenges you may face when migrating from on-premises identity solutions.

---

## The Basics of Migrating to Cloud Solutions

There may be many reasons that you're migrating away from your on-premises solution. To name just a few:

* The provider might be sunsetting or deprecating the solution you use.
* Licensing fees and vendor lock-in might be proving too restrictive.
* Proprietary or non-standard authentication/authorization approaches might be limiting compatibility with new cloud-based products and services.
* The complexity of managing a suite of identity products yourselves might be proving too cumbersome to maintain.

Regardless of the reasons, Auth0 provides several solutions for migrating user data into Auth0. Whether you're trying to migrate all of your users at once &mdash; a common scenario if a license is expiring or a product is being deprecated &mdash; or more gradually, there are options at your disposal to bring your user data into Auth0's database. Migration can even include hashed passwords, so your users won't have to reset their credentials after their data has been moved! Once migrated, you can rely on Auth0's standards-based approach to authentication and authorization and easy integration with any number of other identity providers. And, if you ever need to extract user data, [Auth0 provides bulk user export as well](https://auth0.com/docs/users/guides/bulk-user-exports).

<include src="ebook-ads/UserMigrationYourWay" />

## Migration Strategies: Bulk vs. Automatic

Auth0 offers multiple strategies for migrating users from an existing application. Bulk Importing users, either via the Management API or the User Import/Export Extension, provides an easy way to shift your existing user base to Auth0 all at once. Bulk import is a great approach when you rely on a soon-to-be-deprecated identity service or application. If time is a critical factor, bulk import allows you to remove your use of the old application as quickly as possible. That said, this migration process can be time-consuming if you have a large set of user data, and it might require downtime for your application while you switch your users over.

> Thanks to a recent release, hashed user passwords can now be migrated through bulk import if they use a [supporting hash algorithm](https://auth0.com/docs/users/references/bulk-import-database-schema-examples#supported-hash-algorithms). Password migration was previously only possible when running an Automatic Migration.

The other option for user import is Automatic Migration via custom database connections. This option only migrates users when they sign in through Auth0, removing the need for a costly all-in-one database migration. On the other hand, this approach takes longer than bulk migration owing to its one-at-a-time approach, so if your identity service is being deprecated, this approach may present some difficulties.

Each of these approaches is explained in more detail below.

## Considerations When Migrating from On-Premises Solutions

The list of on-premises identity providers is by no means small, and going through how to extract your user data from each one would make the length of this article somewhat untenable! Regardless, if you're migrating from an on-premises identity provider to Auth0, there are some caveats to watch out for during the user export process. The exact state and availability of your user data will depend on the specifics of your provider &mdash; Oracle's on-premises offerings, for example, can differ significantly from IBM's in approach, architecture, and storage. However, there are a few general items to consider when looking to migrate your data.

First, not all on-premises solutions offer easy export of their user databases. Some may not offer export options at all; in cases like this, [Automatic Migration](https://auth0.com/docs/users/guides/configure-automatic-migration) of your user data could be an option. This method lazily migrates user data from your existing system to Auth0 when users sign in. This approach may require additional custom work &mdash; for example, if your identity solution isn't available to the public internet, you may need to build or configure a reverse proxy to allow external requests to reach your identity server. A custom solution like this is non-trivial to implement, but a future blog post will walk through this process in detail.

Secondly, the complexity of an on-premises solution can present a challenge. Some identity solutions are sold as a single product but, under the hood, store their information across multiple databases or servers in their backend. An in-depth understanding of how user data is stored in your current provider is critical to a successful migration.

Lastly, it's necessary to format your data correctly. Auth0 expects user data in a JSON-formatted file following a [well-documented schema](https://auth0.com/docs/users/references/bulk-import-database-schema-examples). Your data almost certainly won't come out of your current system in a ready-to-import format, so depending on what state it's in, it'll probably need to be re-shaped to match the schema expected by Auth0's import processes.

These considerations aren't meant to scare you off, but it's important to know what you're getting into when it comes to migrating user data. Depending on your in-house resources, it may be beneficial to [reach out to us](https://auth0.com/partners), so we can connect you with a technology partner to help with the specifics of your migration.

With all that said, let's get to the import approaches themselves!

## User Migration Strategy #1: Bulk Import

As mentioned, if you use an identity solution that's being deprecated or an on-premises identity solution, bulk migration might be the right approach for you. This section will walk through setting up an Auth0 Database and importing users.

First and foremost, you should start by extracting the data from your existing identity solution and reformatting it to match the [Auth0 user import schema](https://auth0.com/docs/users/references/bulk-import-database-schema-examples), which expects a JSON file containing user information. Ultimately, an `email` is the only required field to import a user, though the more complete your data set is, the better off you are.

As mentioned above, bulk import allows importing users' hashed passwords into Auth0. Previously, bulk importing required all customers to reset their passwords once their user accounts had been migrated due to password information not being viable for migration. However, that's now changed: Auth0 now supports importing hashed passwords by specifying a custom password hash in the import schema. The [Import & Export Users documentation](https://auth0.com/docs/users/references/bulk-import-database-schema-examples#custom-password-hash) contains details on how to format password hashes for import. The bulk importer supports [several standard common hashing algorithms](https://auth0.com/docs/users/references/bulk-import-database-schema-examples#supported-hash-algorithms).

Once you format your users' data to match the schema, you're ready to configure your database in Auth0 for storing those users.

First, you'll need to create a Database Connection that will store your imported users in an Auth0 User Store. Head to your [Auth0 Dashboard](https://manage.auth0.com), then click the "Connections" link in the left-hand menu. Click "Databases" in the submenu, and then click the "Create DB Connection" button in the top right of the page.

![Auth0 Dashboard DB Connections Page](https://images.ctfassets.net/23aumh6u8s0i/6002ObMmLMEGodUm26OIr3/b48f44467e1036ba062bc5bf5aea1364/db-connections-page)

In the "New Database Connection" form, give your new database a name like `on-prem-migrated-users`. If your current identity provider requires usernames instead of email addresses for login, you can enable that feature here. You can also specify if you want to disable sign-ups for this user store.

Once you've filled out the form, click "Create" and your database connection is ready.

![Auth0 DB Connection Creation Form](https://images.ctfassets.net/23aumh6u8s0i/3ploRR9cHO9TJqHVOZ0Jtu/81985f02cf4ff8c95f097fc714fc49cf/create-db-connection-form)

Now that you've created your user store, there are two ways to import your user data: using the [Management API](https://auth0.com/docs/users/guides/bulk-user-imports) or using the [Import Users extension](https://auth0.com/docs/extensions/user-import-export).

### Importing Users via the Management API

The Management API provides an easy way to import your users into Auth0 programmatically. To do so, you'll first need to get a token with which to call the Management API.

Go to your Applications page and click the Create Application button. Select "Machine to Machine application" as the type and give it a name like "User Import."

![Auth0 Machine to Machine Application creation form](https://images.ctfassets.net/23aumh6u8s0i/6CIAkPt2IXah17BgcBDYu1/fc0cdfdb74052975b79a6dd36ba769f3/m2m-application-creation)

In the following form, select "Auth0 Management API" in the dropdown of APIs to authorize for this application. Lastly, select the `create:users` and `read:connections` scope in the select box so that you'll be able to create users with the token you generate. Lastly, click the "Authorize" button to create your application.

![Auth0 Machine to Machine Application creation API scopes](https://images.ctfassets.net/23aumh6u8s0i/6zJSQCmw0EmNkbhA8XppqK/9a4023bf1064087e70ad0459b0ffcb80/m2m-application-scopes)

After the form saves, you'll land on the details page for the newly created application.

To call the API using the app you just created, you'll first need to request an access token to include in your user import API call. To do so, open a terminal window and use the following cURL command, filling in your app's values for `YOUR_DOMAIN`, `YOUR_CLIENT_ID`, and `YOUR_CLIENT_SECRET`.

```bash
curl --request POST \
 --url 'https://YOUR_DOMAIN/oauth/token' \
 --header 'content-type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded' \
 --data `grant_type=client_credentials` \
 --data 'client_id=YOUR_CLIENT_ID' \
 --data `client_secret=YOUR_CLIENT_SECRET` \
 --data 'audience=https://YOUR_DOMAIN/api/v2/'
```

These values can all be found on your application's details page, under the "Settings" tab:

![settings tab on Auth0 application details page](https://images.ctfassets.net/23aumh6u8s0i/6GKcFxwf0VfaN2oemVR9Wm/2b69f5d6771fceafb16663f32dc48d4f/get-application-details)

> For an easy way to get the proper parameters set, you can go to the [Management API Docs](https://auth0.com/docs/api/management/v2/get-access-tokens-for-production#get-access-tokens) and sign in to copy the exact cURL request you'll need to request an access token.
>
> ![access token cURL command from Auth0 docs](https://images.ctfassets.net/23aumh6u8s0i/zr8zE0lx4Rkqa6H3HCbBr/ec086e4bf496760002c2aa85da6d542a/quick-start-token-from-docs)

With your token in hand, the next piece of information you'll need is the ID of your database connection. You can retrieve this with a request to the Management API's `connections` endpoint.

If you're going through the API, use the following command:

```bash
curl --request GET \
 --url 'https://johnbrennan.auth0.com/api/v2/connections?name=on-prem-migrated-users'
 --header 'authorization: Bearer MGMT_API_ACCESS_TOKEN'
```

You'll need to grab the `id` field from the JSON payload that's returned.

Now that you have the token and database ID, it's just a matter of making a cURL request to the Management API with your token and the JSON file of your users. Use the following command:

```bash
curl \
 -F users=@USERS_IMPORT_FILE.json \
 -F connection_id=CONNECTION_ID \
 -H 'authorization: Bearer MGMT_API_ACCESS_TOKEN' \
 https://johnbrennan.auth0.com/api/v2/jobs/users-imports
```

We're using cURL's `-F` flag as a shortcut for setting some basic properties; namely, setting the request type to `POST` and the `content-type` header to `multipart/form-data`.

Note that, when replacing `USERS_IMPORT_FILE` in the command above, you can either use your computer's absolute path to the user data file (e.g., `@/users/johnbrennan/documents/users.json`) or, if you're calling cURL from the same directory as the file, you can reference it as a local file (e.g., `@users.json`.)

If all goes well, you should get a JSON payload back as a response:

```json
{"type":"users_import","status":"pending","connection_id":"con_v70Bv0ocb8dwTf92","connection":"on-prem-migrated-users","created_at":"2020-03-20T04:56:19.475Z","id":"job_wnt1clHt6VpGs7Lx"}
```

This response indicates that a long-running job has been kicked off to import your users. You can check the status of the job by calling the `/api/v2/jobs/{id}` endpoint, using the `id` property from the JSON response above in the URL.

Once the job is complete, you can head to your Auth0 dashboard to see your imported users. Open the "Users & Roles" section in the lefthand menu and click "Users." Any user you've imported should show in the list; if you have multiple database connections in your Auth0 Tenant, you can filter users by their database connection in the search bar, selecting "Connection" in the "Search By" dropdown to the right of the text area.

![Auth0 users page using connection filter](https://images.ctfassets.net/23aumh6u8s0i/KwjGV6Qf5q7ttHAxTV2xj/ce8155a3c56f025decf6dae3d13c8bf0/filter-users-by-db-connection)

### Importing users via Import Users extension

The other option for Bulk Migration comes in the form of an [Auth0 Extension](https://auth0.com/docs/extensions) called [User Import/Export](https://auth0.com/docs/extensions/user-import-export). Extensions are &mdash; as the name suggests &mdash; scripts and applications that extend the functionality of Auth0. The User Import/Export Extension is built and maintained by Auth0, but it does require installing and authorizing it on your tenant.

To install the extension, head to your [Auth0 Dashboard](https://manage.auth0.com) and click "Extensions" in the left menu. Once on the page, type "import" into the search bar. The "User Import/Export" Extension should be the first result.

![Auth0 extensions page using name filter](https://images.ctfassets.net/23aumh6u8s0i/3X4sOsP1UaKzhE9nP0UQJY/cf0f06df82aa412a0aa7d7ae3250edbc/filtered-list-of-extensions)

Click the extension to open the confirmation screen for adding the extension to your account. Here, you'll see what scopes the extension is requesting on the Auth0 Management API. Click "Install" to start the process.

![Auth0 Extension installation form](https://images.ctfassets.net/23aumh6u8s0i/3ID8NSAyDVT0Ma5OnCXpzA/11cc71796bf9f7ab9cdb01f34d376b83/extension-installation)

Once installed, you can easily access the extension under the "Installed Extensions" tab on the main Extensions page.

![list of installed Auth0 extensions](https://images.ctfassets.net/23aumh6u8s0i/uebHdTsVMEwk5uGwLOtOo/cc2f4c1b6ff07ea9a6fb5d8795c5100d/installed-extensions-list)

You'll need to authorize the extension for use with your Auth0 account before using it. To do so, click on the extension's name to open the authorization screen:

![authorization screen for Auth0 extension](https://images.ctfassets.net/23aumh6u8s0i/ECTHNHFmvdcvqF0V1n2aT/83f6705903bef38c4719e44276407851/extension-authorization)

Once authorized, the extension provides a form from which you can upload your formatted JSON file containing user data.

![User Import Export extension upload screen](https://images.ctfassets.net/23aumh6u8s0i/7EBqQvRXECrak1E7Bk2sk9/dd0991349f308d4734dd28f92811c0e7/extension-upload-screen)

For a more comprehensive explanation of the extension and its capabilities, you can check out the [Auth0 Docs page for the User Import/Export Extension](https://auth0.com/docs/extensions/user-import-export).

## User Migration Strategy #2: Automatic Migration

If your current solution isn't immediately being deprecated, [Automatic Migration](https://auth0.com/docs/users/guides/configure-automatic-migration) is a convenient way to migrate users one at a time as they sign in.

As mentioned above, one key consideration with this solution is whether or not your existing identity solution is accessible from the public internet, which is required for Automatic Migration to work. If your user data isn't publicly available, you'll need to do some additional work to hook up a migration solution. Depending on your identity solution, one option is to create a reverse proxy (e.g., using NGINX or serverless functions) that's exposed to the public internet and will reformat and forward requests to your internal identity solution. The specifics are relatively complex and beyond the scope of this post, but we're planning a future post that explores this solution in detail!

Automatic Migration works by writing custom scripts, implemented in JavaScript, that call your existing identity provider's APIs when a user logs in to Auth0. When the script runs, Auth0 checks if the user exists in Auth0's database. If they do, they log in as expected. If they are not, the custom script calls the existing identity store to retrieve the user's information and store it in Auth0's database. This way, users are only migrated when they log in, meaning a seamless transition between identity providers.

![Diagram of Auth0 automatic migration logic](https://images.ctfassets.net/23aumh6u8s0i/52NQ04AL71R5z8aqnWFf5z/7e689450ddc6e170821744eacdb62cdf/migrating-diagram)

As mentioned above, the tradeoff in this approach is the amount of time it takes. Since user data migrates only as a user logs in, infrequent or dormant users may not have their data migrated to Auth0 in a reasonable amount of time.

If you have some time in your migration strategy, you also have the option of a two-stage approach to migration. This hybrid approach involves starting with Automatic Migration to move your existing active users over to Auth0 quickly and seamlessly, followed by bulk importing remaining users after automatic migrations slow down.

## Conclusion

Migrating your identity solution can feel like a daunting task. Even setting aside the business complexities, the act of retrieving user data from your existing system and moving it to a new one can present many logistical challenges. Auth0 aims to lower the complexity of this process as much as possible and, with multiple approaches to data migration, create a seamless experience for your customer base.

Technical Strategies for Migrating Users to Auth0

dominick

I'm a Product Designer, Visual Designer and UX Developer in the Seattle area. I create beautiful products that enhance customer experiences and drive business goals.

Product Designer at Auth0

Dominick Renzetti

We provide these out-of-the-box solutions to your end users through a not-so-little product we call Universal Login.

Here at [Auth0](https://auth0.com/), we provide our customers with the means of easily implementing that one thing we all do just about every day — Authentication. Ah yes, the good ol’ email address and password. Tired of typing in that password? Yeah, we’ve got passwordless login. Need an extra layer of security? Hell yeah, you can implement two-factor authentication. We provide these out-of-the-box solutions to your end users through a not-so-little product we call Universal Login. 

Alright, you’re probably not here to read a pitch as to why you should be using Universal Login and I’m most definitely not the right person to be doing that. In fact, what it’s capable of isn’t even that important here either. What’s more important to understand are the end users who might use this very product: Everyone. That implies people with disabilities, lower tech devices, without access to high speed internet, and the likes. If the title didn’t give it away, we’re talking about how we’ve taken steps towards creating a customizable product while remaining accessible, and we’ve started with Universal Login. 

## Our Journey
You may have gathered this by now but if you haven’t, Universal Login is a white-label product meaning it’s meant to be re-styled to match a company’s brand. Although our journey started by using best practices towards creating an easily customizable experience for our users, we slowly started facing some of the challenges that designing both a white-label and accessible product creates and ultimately learned the importance of ensuring our product remained accessible. Sure, when building a product from scratch you can select colors that offer enough contrast, but what happens when you put that in the hands of your customers? How do we ensure that when UL is customized it remains just as accessible? 

![Auth0s-Journey-Towards-a-Customizable-Accessible-Login-Experience](https://images.ctfassets.net/23aumh6u8s0i/5K6pIjP1kfmNlEf7cUHB2N/a2b71303b163dd89ca40bd18552c2f3b/hero_journey)

### Understanding Our Customers
As with everything, you can’t build the right product without knowing your customers, and that same concept certainly remained true here. We couldn’t build a white-label product without understanding our customer’s problems and needs, so we took our questions to them. We wanted to know what they would need to be able to customize in order to make our out-of-the-box solution viable for them and their product. Knowing their specific needs would allow us to determine areas where accessibility might be a concern and how we can ensure the product remains accessible. 

After talking with some of our customers, our findings were generally in line with our expectations: Besides the obvious logo, primary color and background color/image were the most important variables necessary to provide a simple yet customizable experience. Defining how these are used within the experience was the fun part, and I’ll dive deep into that soon. 

Skipping ahead a bit, the one thing on everyone’s mind during the design process was simplicity. Not just simple flows, but a simple visual language to help foster a simply customizable experience. How did we achieve this? 

### Keeping It Simple
As designers, we love to be trendy and push design boundaries when possible. I know this because that’s something I find myself trying to do maybe a bit too often (which is not necessarily a bad thing). Either way, Universal Login was not the place for this, and that’s okay. We saved ourselves a few headaches by not going nuts trying to invent the next big design thing. 

Here’s a perfect example: I’m sure you’ve seen those large yet subtle and soft drop shadows on buttons and cards all over Dribbble or even a few different company websites. While this is admittedly pretty, it might not match other company’s product branding, so why force it? These details are great for individual company branding, but doesn’t work for a white-label product. 

We kept the fancy stuff to a minimum to ensure that we met branding requirements for ~95% of companies out there, not just the 5%. 

### One color to rule them all
Besides a background color (or image), we knew that our customers wanted a customizable primary color. Could that one color be sufficient enough? That’s something that we’re still learning, but if we assumed that most companies tend to have one unique brand color, then we’re getting pretty damn close. This one color, when applied across the experience, would ensure that our out-of-the-box experience felt like yours. And to make things even more simple, we didn’t try applying this color across multiple components. Each prompt typically has one primary action button, and we found that by applying the customer’s primary color to this button, we could provide sufficient coverage of the brand color to the complete login experience.

![One-color-to-rule-them-all](https://images.ctfassets.net/23aumh6u8s0i/53pDOHpDtflqN9kbjFYHjN/51295037ae1ce7ffeec3f962016bcc5a/image_1)
With the change of one color and a logo, we’re able to make the experience feel branded towards any company.

### Thinking One Step Ahead
So what does all of this have to do with accessibility, you ask? We all know that if you give people the option to do something, they will do it, and for us that will result in a bright yellow button with white text over top. If we’re allowing our customer to change something as important as the button color, how could we help them ensure that the text over top had enough contrast to make it legible? It was at this point that accessibility, specifically color accessibility, became something we were actually starting to think about. 

Our solution? Don’t let our customers make the decision on their own. Let’s do the heavy lifting and suggest the best possible contrasting text color. 

Using some simple yet nifty code, we’re able to remain one step ahead and automatically select the best contrasting text color between black or white based on the provided primary color, all the while maintaining [AA conformance](https://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG20/) for accessibility. This is quite the improvement over the previous Universal Login experience which defaulted to a white text color and would require some development knowledge to adjust the text color if necessary. 

![Thinking-One-Step-Ahead](https://images.ctfassets.net/23aumh6u8s0i/5xJuRIzMCwyqPowbiSfJuG/b7b737923dbc6725e52b39283a821d14/image_2)
How the button text color changes based on the user provided primary color.

## What Have We Done to Create More Accessible Components?
Accessibility is a topic that’s gaining traction within Auth0 and becoming something we value and incorporate into our every day process as designers. A year ago, you could have asked us “Hey Auth0, what do y’all do to be more accessible?” and our response would have been something along the lines of “not enough”. As designers, we have the power to influence the product’s direction and push for customer-centric design initiatives within our product teams, and that’s exactly what’s starting to happen. As a company, we’re now aware of the importance of providing an accessible product, and within the Login team, we’re working towards that goal every day. 

## Color Accessibility
We started by ensuring all of our colors met AA conformance. After running out first set of colors through the [WebAIM contrast checker](https://webaim.org/resources/contrastchecker/), we were somewhat surprised to see several colors that were not passing, leading us to make another attempt at making these more accessible. This resulted in a more robust set of gray values ranging from light to dark that could be used across UI components and different variants of text. At the same time, we also improved the remainder of the colors including the secondary color (used for links and component focus states) and the set of alert colors for informing the user of success or that an error has occurred. 

![Color-Accessibility](https://images.ctfassets.net/23aumh6u8s0i/5Piv53NiCWNJzxQWuP48Yn/42a2343cb1ec85037f9656a2d064636a/image_3)

## Low Vision Accessibility
Improvements were made to the prompts to increase readability for users with low vision by increasing the default font size to 14px except for input fields, buttons, and other interactive components where the size was increased to 16px. While we were at it, we took a moment to also increase the line spacing to match ~1.5x the font size. While increased line spacing is typically beneficial when dealing with larger paragraphs, there are a couple of scenarios where the body text of a prompt reaches onwards of four lines. Increased line spacing ensured that the body text is scannable, accessible, and readable. 

### Other Forms of Accessibility
For users with motor disabilities, we increased the button and input component sizes alongside the increase in font size. Lastly, we ensured to create better focus states for all interactive components, including buttons, input fields, list items, and links, creating a tabbable experience that can then be completed solely by keyboard. 

## What Does the Future Hold?
While many efforts were made over the past year, there are still areas where accessibility falls short within Universal Login, specifically for users who are blind. Our input fields remain inaccessible in this area due to the lack of labels. This forces us to rely on an icon to represent a field in the situation that the placeholder text is not descriptive enough or the field has been filled in. This is a major problem because not only is the field visually hard to understand, but this also means it’s not readable by a text reader for folks who are blind.

![What-Does-the-Future-Hold](https://images.ctfassets.net/23aumh6u8s0i/4DJJoRrM3RzNGD7vN13wNl/dbd6adafae477b7ca32e10d9b6629b98/image_4)
Input field exploration.

In terms of accessibility, screen reader compatibility is a top priority for us, including adjusting the input design to support labels. We’ve explored several input design options, outlined the pros and cons of each, and are currently in the process of selecting the best of the options so that we can move forward with implementation and ensure that each prompt can be read and successfully completed by using a screen reader. 

## Conclusion
When I look at accessibility, I see it like this: It’s not an optional side quest in a video game that you can just overlook. It’s actually part of the main quest and you must complete it to truly finish the game. And while I know that sounds a bit daunting, the truth is that it’s not all that difficult to make a big impact with minimal effort. As designers, we have a responsibility to make our designs accessible for all, and we’ve gotta start somewhere. 

At the end of the day, whether you’re reading this as a designer or as someone seeking Auth0 as a potential identity solution, know that accessibility is just as important to us as it is to you. 

Until next time! 

P.S. If you are considering a job at Auth0, learn more about working remotely as a designer [here](https://medium.com/auth0-design/designing-remotely-at-auth0-5d9fb8499e29) and be sure to check out our jobs page here.

Auth0’s Journey Towards a Customizable & Accessible Login Experience

jenny-obrien

I'm a former business journalist who's fascinated by the intersection of tech and business strategy — in particular how the right solution can transform an idea into reality. I specialize in ROI, data privacy, and identity.

Business Content Manager

Jenny O'Brien

Your company’s value lies in its data. Here’s how to get it M&A-ready.

For executives, positioning your business for mergers and acquisitions is a bit like searching for a spouse: Ideally, two organizations join together in a binding relationship to create something that is greater than the sum of its parts. But just as most first dates don’t lead to marriage, most Merger and Acquisition (M&A) deals fall apart before they ever take place.

Often, due diligence reveals that one company’s internal operations are in disarray, and the dealmakers get cold feet. Even if the deal does go through, [research shows](https://hbr.org/2016/05/so-many-ma-deals-fail-because-companies-overlook-this-simple-strategy) that the majority of completed M&As end up coming at a loss to shareholder value.

If you’re looking to put together a successful M&A deal, you need to prove from the outset that you can integrate your operations with a new partner quickly, easily, and securely. That requires putting identity and access management (IAM) at the center of your M&A strategy.

## IAM Integration Shouldn’t Slow Down Your M&A

When the ink is dry on your M&A deal, you want to hit the ground running and capitalize on synergies, locate economies of scale, and break into new markets. But part of a merger is the merging of data, allowing you to benefit from each other’s workforces, infrastructure, and market share. If your IAM solutions don’t integrate, you can wind up with duplicate processes, wasted resources, and team members who can’t access the information they need under the new structure.

Trying to handle post-merger integration is a challenge for most in-house developers because coding for identity is a specialized and constantly evolving field. If your IAM solutions aren’t compatible, [it can easily take months](https://auth0.com/learn/servcorp-saves-months-development-time-thanks-auth0/) to integrate applications, and that’s time that internal teams should spend on value creation.

A successful M&A deal has hundreds of moving parts — from consolidating your supply chains to picking out a new logo — and, inevitably, getting both parties in line takes time. But during the onboarding period, employees still need to be able to go ahead with business.

<include src="TweetQuote" quoteText="Change is a huge part of post-merger integration. Find out how @auth0’s IAM solution is central to your M&A strategy."/>

Kurt Borg, senior product owner of Auth0 customer [Catena Media](https://auth0.com/case-studies/catena-media/), has discussed the challenge of managing multiple teams during acquisitions: “We had a lot of systems that people used to log into with different accounts,” Borg says. “That is a nightmare to maintain and it’s a nightmare for scalability because new people join and need access... And when people leave that is the most delicate thing because you need to make sure that all access is closed. If you don’t have one centralized authentication system, there’s going to be a problem.”

Controlling permissions across multiple systems requires an extensible IAM solution so administrators can manage disparate applications from a single location. Auth0’s platform connects to any application running on any platform or device, with detailed, step-by-step instructions so your developers can integrate across organizations as quickly as possible. That way, legacy applications aren't holding you back from locating cost synergies and embracing new technologies.

![Dashboard](https://images.ctfassets.net/23aumh6u8s0i/6NsvZr7ypj7N9Hbve61ObJ/14bb6abb55f40e92ff777a0f576cf980/IAM-dashboard)

## Mergers & Acquisitions Don’t Have to Compromise Customer Experience

Whether your business model is B2B or CIAM, the last thing you want to do is frustrate your customers with M&A disruptions, since every time you lose a customer, your M&A deal loses value. That’s why it’s vital to provide a seamless customer experience during the transition, even while you’re consolidating operations behind the scenes.

A modern IAM platform can enhance customer experience by providing frictionless [access across multiple brands](https://auth0.com/blog/how-enterprise-architects-can-cut-manteinance-costs-in-multi-brand-media/). Implementing [Single Sign On (SSO) Authentication](https://auth0.com/learn/how-to-implement-single-sign-on/) allows users to log in to one application and then gain access to all of a parent company’s business units without needing to sign in again. Not only does this benefit customer experience, but it’s also the first step in creating a single, unified view of your customer, rather than the same person logging in with multiple sets of credentials. Consolidating customer directories during M&As can take significant time, but with a federated approach to identity, you don’t have to wait to start creating a centralized repository of customer information to act as a single source of truth.

<include src="TweetQuote" quoteText="Discover how #identitymanagement can help reduce the scalability nightmares during acquisition-driven expansions by streamlining post-merger integration."/>

Ensuring customer satisfaction during an M&A isn’t just about improving their login experience, and your most important customer-facing touchpoints are your employees. Those employees can’t assist customers if the data they need is siloed, or if they’re struggling to navigate unfamiliar tech. But with a modern, centralized IAM platform, employees from across both organizations can access a complete profile of a customer and their needs while they're speaking, enabling them to offer the right assistance and products. Being able to offer IAM as a competitive advantage can increase the purchase price of an acquired company.

## Data Security Can Be an M&A Liability… or an Asset

If data security was once an afterthought in M&A transactions, it’s now a make-or-break factor. Today, companies must contend with a new wave of global data privacy laws like [GDPR and CCPA](https://auth0.com/blog/data-privacy-2019-the-lowdown/), which can impose debilitating fines for noncompliance.

Case in point: [Marriott International](https://www.csoonline.com/article/3441220/marriott-data-breach-faq-how-did-it-happen-and-what-was-the-impact.html) was hit with a $123 million [GDPR fine](https://www.forbes.com/sites/kateoflahertyuk/2019/07/09/marriott-faces-gdpr-fine-of-123-million/#2c71c1484525) for a data breach that came as the direct result of IT problems with their acquisition of Starwood. Starwood’s network was compromised in 2014, Marriott acquired them in 2016, and in 2018, when the breach came to light, Starwood’s reservation system still hadn’t been migrated to Marriott’s system. The breach, and its fallout, has become a cautionary tale about the importance of data security due diligence in M&A deals.

Achieving compliance in a rapidly evolving regulatory landscape requires expertise and constant, ongoing maintenance, so a legacy, in-house IAM solution may have security or compliance gaps. Some SMBs may be too small to fall under CCPA or GDPR’s scope, but it should still be part of your growth strategy. Even if you’re confident your system is airtight, an M&A deal could fall through if your prospective acquirer is nervous that they’ll be inheriting unresolved issues.

To give potential M&A partners peace of mind that there are no skeletons in your data security closet, you first have to form a complete picture of where your data is being stored and who has access to it. Unfortunately, most businesses have sensitive information siloed across business units, shared via unsecured applications, or access to vendors or ex-employees. But if you connect your applications to a centralized user management system, you can impose order on your data.

![Auth0 Dashboard](https://images.ctfassets.net/23aumh6u8s0i/4jTBX21IwfoVe0hK9Jys4D/7bfcdf1a6525ef6a115dafcd8576402e/auth0-dashboard)

With a dashboard for user management, you can see how your data is being used, manage permissions, and implement heightened security as needed. For example, if there were a spreadsheet of unencrypted customer data, you could see who had access via your dashboard. From there, you could decide that it would be an appropriate place to implement [multifactor authentication (MFA)](https://auth0.com/blog/why-nist-recommends-mfa-to-fight-ecommerce-fraud/), so your employees would have to prove their identities before accessing it.

The simplest solution for proving your data security bona fides is to outsource IAM to a trusted, credentialed IAM platforms like Auth0, whose core competency is data security and compliance. Not only will the right IAM partner provide the appropriate security updates, but it will also lend you its credibility, and your prospective partners will feel more comfortable sharing their data with you.

## Give Your Company M&A Appeal

2018 and 2019 were banner years for M&A activity, and the [trend will likely continue](https://www2.deloitte.com/us/en/pages/mergers-and-acquisitions/articles/ma-trends-report.html) in 2020. Executives who want to capitalize on this moment have to be able to prove that their partners will be getting data that is streamlined, accessible, and secure, not a tangled legacy application stamped with the idiosyncrasies of in-house developers. With an extensible IAM platform like Auth0, you can position your company for successful deals—not just in getting them signed but in getting them to deliver real shareholder value as well.

<include src="asides/AboutAuth0" />

Why Your M&A Strategy Has to Include an IAM Solution

pablo-casas

I am responsible for the creation of AI and machine learning models in different areas of Auth0, like Support, Marketing, and Anomaly Detection for Product. Learning and teaching about data is my passion! Recently, I published the open-source “Data Science Live Book”, which you can read at http://livebook.datascienceheroes.com. You can also find me teaching Data Science at Universidad Tecnológica Nacional de Argentina.

Sr. Data Scientist / AI

Pablo Casas

Learn how the Auth0 data team combines R and Python to leverage data engineering and machine learning solutions.

The Data team is responsible for crunching, reporting, and serving data. The team also does data integrations with other systems, creating machine learning, and deep learning models.

With this post, we intend to share our favorite tools, which are proven to run with thousands of millions of data. 
Scaling processes in real-world scenarios is a hot topic among new people coming to data.

## R or Python?

Well... both!

![R and Python logos](https://images.ctfassets.net/23aumh6u8s0i/32tvQ9ZJWzVodIJd3k6sMI/18dc59e9b71fda2d15edca0c83503cbd/r-python)

[R](https://www.r-project.org/about.html) is a GNU project, thought as a statistical data language originally developed at Bell Laboratories around 1996.

[Python](https://www.python.org/), developed in 1991 by Guido van Rossum, is a general-purpose language with a focus on code readability.

Both R and Python are highly extensible through packages.

We mainly use R for our data processes and ML projects, and Python to do the integrations and Deep Learning projects.

Our stack is R with [RStudio](https://rstudio.com), and Python 3 with [Jupyter](https://jupyter.org/) notebooks.

RStudio is an open-source and vast IDE capable of browsing data and objects created during the session, plots, debugging code, among many other options. It also provides an enterprise-ready solution.

Jupyter is also an open-source IDE aimed to interface Julia, Python, and R. Today's is widely used for data scientists to share their analysis. Recently Google creates "Colab", a Jupyter notebook environment capable of running in the google drive cloud.

## So is R Capable of Running on Production?

Yes. 

We run several heavy data preparations and predictive models every day, every hour, and every few minutes.

## How Do We Run R and Python Tasks on Production?

We use [Airflow](https://airflow.apache.org/) as an orchestrator, an open-source project created by Airbnb.

Airflow is an incredible and robust project which allows us to schedule processes, assign priorities, rules, detailed log, etc.

For development, we still use the form: `Rscript my_awesome_script.R`.

Airflow is a Python-based task scheduler that allows us to run chained processes, with many complex dependencies, monitoring the current state of all of them and firing alerts if anything goes wrong to Slack. This is ideal for running import jobs to populate the Data Warehouse with fresh data every day.

## Do We Have a Data Warehouse?

Yes, and it's huge! 

It's mounted on Amazon Redshift, a suitable option if scaling is a priority. Visit their [website](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/redshift/latest/mgmt/welcome.html) to learn more about it.

R connects directly to Amazon Redshift thanks to the [rauth0 package](https://github.com/auth0/rauth0), which uses the [redshiftTools](https://blog.datascienceheroes.com/redshifttools-v1-0-0-cran-release) package, developed by [Pablo Seibelt](https://auth0.com/blog/authors/pablo-seibelt/).

Generally, data is uploaded from R to Amazon Redshift using `redshiftTools`. This data can be either plain files or from data frames created during the R session.

We use Python to import and export unstructured data since R does not have useful libraries currently to handle it. 

We have experimented with JSON libraries in R but the result is much worse than using Python in this scenario. For example, using [RJSONIO](https://rdrr.io/cran/RJSONIO/man/fromJSON.html) the dataset is automatically transformed into an R Data Frame, with little control of how the transformation is done. This is only useful for very simple JSON data structures and is very difficult to manipulate in R, compared to Python where this is much easier and more natural.

<include src="TweetQuote" quoteText="Auth0 uses Python to import and export unstructured data."/>

### How do we deal with data preparation using R?

We have two scenarios, data preparation for data engineering, and data preparation for machine learning/AI. 

One of the biggest strengths of R is the [tidyverse](https://www.tidyverse.org/packages) package, which is a set of packages developed by lots of ninja developers, some of them working at RStudio Inc company. They provide a common API and a shared philosophy for working with data. We will cover an example in the next section.

The tidyverse, especially the [dplyr](https://dplyr.tidyverse.org) package, contains a set of functions that make the exploratory data analysis and data preparation quite comfortable.

For certain tasks in crunching data prep and visualization, we use the [funModeling](https://blog.datascienceheroes.com/exploratory-data-analysis-data-preparation-with-funmodeling/) package. It was the seed for an open-source book I published some time ago: [Data Science Live Book](http://livebook.datascienceheroes.com/). It contains some good practices we follow related to deploying models on production, dealing with missing data, handling outliers, and more.

<include src="TweetQuote" quoteText="One of the biggest strengths of R is the tidyverse package, which is a set of packages developed by lots of ninja developers."/>

## Does R Scale?

One of the key points of `dplyr` is it can be run on databases, thanks to another package with a pretty similar name: [dbplyr](https://dbplyr.tidyverse.org/). 

This way, we write R syntax (`dplyr`) and it is "automagically" converted to SQL syntax and it then runs on production.

There are some cases in which these conversions from R to SQL are not made automatically. For such cases, we are still able to do a mix of SQL syntax in R.

For example, following dplyr syntax:

```sql
flights %>%
 group_by(month, day) %>%
 summarise(delay = mean(dep_delay)) 
```

Generates:

```sql
SELECT `month`, `day`, AVG(`dep_delay`) AS `delay`
FROM `nycflights13::flights`
GROUP BY `month`, `day`
```

This way, `dbplyr` makes transparent for the R user working with objects in RAM or a foreign database.

Not many people know, but many key pieces of R are written in C++ (concretely, the [Rcpp](http://adv-r.had.co.nz/Rcpp.html) package).

### How do we share the results?

Mostly in [Tableau](https://www.tableau.com/). We have some integrations with [Salesforce](https://www.salesforce.com). 

In addition, we do have some reports deployed in [Shiny](https://shiny.rstudio.com). Especially the ones that need complex customer interaction.
Shiny allows custom reports to be built using simple R code without having to learn Javascript, Python or other frontend and backend languages. Through the use of a "reactive" interface, the user can input parameters that the Shiny application can use to react and redraw any reports. In contrast with tools like Tableau, Domo, PowerBI, etc. which are more "drag and drop", the programmatic nature of Shiny apps allow them to do almost anything the developer can conceive in their imagination, which might be more difficult or impossible in other tools.

For ad hoc reports (HTML), we use [R markdown](https://rmarkdown.rstudio.com) which shares some functionality with to jupyter notebooks. It allows a script to be created with an analysis that ends in a dashboard, PDF report, web-based reports, and also books!

## Machine Learning / AI

We use both R and Python. 

For Machine Learning projects, we use mainly the [`caret`](https://topepo.github.io/caret/index.html) package in R. It provides a high-level interface to many machine learning algorithms, as well as common tasks in data preparation, model evaluation, and hyper-tuning parameter.

For Deep Learning, we use Python, specifically the libraries [Keras](https://keras.io) with [TensorFlow](https://www.tensorflow.org/) as the backend. Keras is an API to build with just a bunch of lines of code, many of the most complex neural networks. It can easily scale by training them on the cloud, in services like AWS.

Nowadays we are also doing some experiments with the [fastai](https://www.fast.ai/) library for NLP problems. 

## Summing Up!

The open-source languages are leading the data path. R and Python have strong communities, and there are free and top-notch resources to learn.

Here we wanted to share the not-so-common approach of using R for data engineering tasks, what are our favorite and Python libraries, with a focus on sharing the results, explaining some of the practices we do every day.

We think the most important stages in a data project are the data analysis and data preparation. Choosing the right approach can save a lot of time and make the project to scale.

We hope this post encourages you to try some of the suggested technologies and rock your data projects!

<include src="asides/AboutAuth0" />

---

How the Auth0 Data Team Uses R and Python

Vittorio

Vittorio Bertocci is a Principal Architect for Auth0. Before Auth0, he had a lengthy career with Microsoft, where Vittorio worked with Fortune 100 and Global 100 companies, including working on Microsoft’s Azure Active Directory team as principal program manager focusing on the developer experience. He contributed to the inception and launch of Microsoft's claims-based platform components (Windows Identity Foundation and ADFS, ADAL and MSAL SDKs, ASP.NET middleware). Vittorio is a well known speaker, educator and published author.

Principal Architect

Vittorio Bertocci

A New Way of Decoding Your Identity Solutions

_**TL;DR:** Auth0 is releasing Auth0 Explorer, an experimental tool that helps you to visualize your Auth0 tenant’s overall structure, offering an innovative user interface to zoom out to the big picture or dive into the details of individual applications settings._

At Auth0 we are obsessed with making identity simple for application builders. In our quest to help our customers and the community at large to better navigate the complexity of identity development, we constantly strive to improve existing technologies. Sometimes, however, we tackle problems that call for more radical innovation and bolder experimentation.

Take the “many moving parts” problem. In a nutshell: any identity solution of non-trivial scope is usually composed by a large number of components, all interacting in non-obvious ways and contributing to the solution’s emergent behavior. Your solution will have multiple identity sources, many clients, and API tangled in complex call graphs, custom logic running here and there, authentication and authorization policies scattered across your topology, and so on. Even if you are an identity expert, well-versed in protocols and concepts, you still need to understand the details of that particular solution to work with it.
What is the state of the art in our industry to help you navigate that particular flavor of complexity? The available tools haven’t changed for quite some time. Every vendor will offer a management portal of some kind, where you can list artifacts of a given type (applications, trusted identity providers, etc) and dig into the details of individual items, but it’s usually very hard to _see_ the relationships between entities and predict what the overall behavior will be. You can see the trees but not the forest. Using APIs and CLIs to inspect your solution doesn’t yield much better results.

While brainstorming how we could help, we informally observed what coping strategies are most commonly pursued by professionals and newbies alike. And what did we find? Nearly everyone makes a _drawing_ of their solution to make sense of it. Scribbles on a whiteboard or a notepad, diagrams in official specs, no matter the format, pictures of the solution components and the relationships between them play a key role in planning, development, and management - and often are the centerpiece of discussions and decision making.

We already took steps to help crafting diagrams effectively, from providing the raw material (see the [identicons clipart collection](https://identicons.dev/) for identity concepts) to publishing templates and examples (like the [Auth0 Engine diagram](https://cdn.auth0.com/blog/auth0-raises-100m-to-fuel-the-growth/inside-the-auth0-engine-high-res.jpg)), but we felt we could do more. We realized that Auth0 tenants already hold all the information necessary to draw a complete picture of your solution, and more… so why should you reverse engineer a diagram when we can generate one for you? That’s how the idea of **Auth0 Explorer** was born.

## Navigating your Identity Solution

Auth0 Explorer is an experimental tool that generates a visual representation of your Auth0 tenant on the fly, arranging in a clear layout all major artifacts (connections, apps, API), representing relationships as a graph, and allowing you to examine every element in greater detail.

There’s no point in describing Auth0 Explorer any further, the best way to give you an idea is to simply show it in action! Just navigate to [https://explorer.auth0.com/](https://explorer.auth0.com/). You’ll be presented with an essential landing page.

![Auth0 Explorer landing page](https://images.ctfassets.net/23aumh6u8s0i/1ftGKX4YtoYkKfMYGFPTqL/c654564443aedce4833629bfeef41b06/landing-page)

Hit Login and sign in with your Auth0 account. You’ll be presented with a consent page:

![Auth0 Explorer consent page](https://images.ctfassets.net/23aumh6u8s0i/5WzJEizvZlugj1Os9qVlpM/786ade19bac85963e8ed5a0d080eb1ea/consent)

The drop-down offers you the chance to select what tenant you want to explore among the ones associated with your user account.

Auth0 Explorer uses the Auth0 Management API, just like any app you might develop by yourself on top of the Auth0 platform. As such, it needs to explicitly ask for consent for reading all the tenant entities it will display. Hit ‘Accept,’ and you’ll land on Auth0 Explorer’s main page.

## Grasping the Big Picture

<include src="Vidyard" id="CjEPUTj6wNC67PzzzaA4jE" />
 

What you will see is a full diagram of the Auth0 tenant I selected. The top row contains all the connections configured for the tenant. The middle row lists all the applications registered, conveniently color coded to clarify the client type (web app, native client, etc). The bottom row lists all the tenant’s API, including Auth0’s built in ones.

Not only you can see all the main actors in a single representation: if you hover on the individual connection icons, you’ll immediately see what applications are configured to accept identities from them! In the video above you can immediately see what providers are used by many apps, which ones are configured but not used at all, and everything in between.

If you hover on an application icon, you’ll navigate the graph in the opposite direction, making it immediately obvious what identities are accepted for a given application – and what API that application is configured to invoke. That’s pretty neat! The structure of your tenant is laid bare in front of you.

Here’s another example of the potential of Auth0 Explorer for making sense of your solutions. Have you ever tried to compare tenants, or to find out whether your dashboard is open on the tenant you need to work on. Sure, there’s the name visible on the top right…but compare it with the immediate, intuitive insight you get when you visualize two different tenants in two different instances of Auth0 Explorer:

![Visualizing two tenants in Auth0 Explorer](https://images.ctfassets.net/23aumh6u8s0i/5Nh0wp0aRmB3IsPVNxNQyB/139c50ad675bb967f4698fd86e50ee9b/visualizing-2-tenants)

Telling which tenant is your production environment and which one is just being used for experiments becomes blindingly obvious.

Here’s another example of “big picture” insight that becomes possible with Auth0 Explorer. Take a look at the following video.

<include src="Vidyard" id="oZ1AAT8w48HQNt8SroB2eQ" />
 

In this particular case, I am turning on the traffic layer – which has the effect of varying the thickness of the line connecting an app to an identity provider according to the amount of traffic that IdP generates for the application, as recorded in Auth0 logs. Here you can clearly see that the lion’s share for this app comes from GitHub, followed by Facebook.

Remember, we are still at the experimental stage with Auth0 Explorer: this is just one example of the kind of insight we could offer you in this view, and we are looking forward to your feedback on both visualization style and data layers you’d like to see available here.

## Examining Individual Entities

Once you’ve found your bearings within the tenant, Auth0 Explorer helps you to dig into the details of any of the artifacts displayed in the diagram. The following video shows you a concrete example of that.

<include src="Vidyard" id="aXEGZWz9ez3H1325MxoZpq" />
 

Whenever you click on an icon, Auth0 Explorer uses the pane on the right to display the attributes of the corresponding entity. In the video above I select the Google connection, a custom DB connection and one SPA – and every time, the right pane shows me the corresponding details. Whenever I decide I want to edit the entity I am examining, I can always click the Edit in Dashboard button and be deep-linked to the corresponding Auth0 Dashboard page. In the example here I do so for a SPA. Any changes will be automatically picked up by Auth0 Explorer at the next refresh.

## Understanding Applications’ Behavior End-to End

Excited yet? Well, hold on to your hats, because the surprises aren’t over yet! We tackled the problem of working at the tenant level, but there’s still a lot we can do at the single application level.

Even the best identity experts cannot simply glance at a list of application attributes (such as the ones displayed in a typical dashboard: client_IDs, return URLs etc) and anticipate how the application will actually work at run time. There are lots of moving parts and service features all contributing to the actual application behavior, and a bunch of text labels just isn’t expressive enough to communicate a complex ensemble of features in immediate, intuitive way.

By simply double-clicking on an application icon, you can experience how Auth0 Explorer tries to address that challenge with a novel approach.

<include src="Vidyard" id="N9b6StnoNV84HmzttvETu3" />
 

What you see in the GIF above is a representation of the journey of an authentication request, placing on its path all the Auth0 features you can use to customize its behavior.

Going from left to right, you encounter the Anomaly Detection stage, the Universal Login stage (with associated set of identity providers configured for this particular app), the extensibility block (more on that in a minute) and the multi factor authentication stage.

Each feature is represented by an icon that can be either grayed out (if the feature is disabled) or lighted up in color (if the feature is on). Consistently with the affordances you already encountered in the tenant level diagram, you can click on every icon to find details in the right pane.
When you click the Universal Login icon you get an actual preview of what the authentication experience will look like: and if you want to explore that aspect further, Auth0 Explorer offers you a direct link to [Auth0 Flows](https://auth0.com/blog/visualize-the-power-of-auth0-in-minutes/), where you will be able to examine how different user journeys will look like - automatically configured to use logo, colors, and backgrounds from your tenant settings.

If you are using Auth0, chances are that your app takes advantage of our advanced extensibility capabilities - namely, the ability to inject your own Node.js code and execute it directly within our authorization pipeline. That’s an incredibly powerful feature, but it is not always immediately intuitive to keep track of its influence within the context of all the other features.

Yep, you called it! Auth0 Explorer does something for this scenario too. You just need to click on the Extensibility block in the Application View to find out.

<include src="Vidyard" id="8fvgxVprMp5NJ7nHrht2FQ" />
 

Once expanded, the Extensibility block displays a compact representation of the code extensibility pipeline – showing what extensibility points are there at your disposal, in what sequence they are triggered, and whether you already did add code to them or if they are still inactive.

If you click on the Rules icon, the right pane will display a sequence of all the rules configured for the tenant, with the ones that will trigger for this particular app switched on. If you want to quickly make sense of what a particular rule does, you can click on View Code on the corresponding entry and see its source inlined. If you decide to edit it, the usual Edit in Dashboard button will open the dashboard directly on the right page.

## We Want Your Feedback!

Although it looks great and nicely polished (if we do say so ourselves), it’s important to remember that Auth0 Explorer is not a product or an Auth0 feature at this point in time. It’s an experiment, with no SLA – something we’ll iterate on, changing things around often, and without notice.

We have seen an area where the industry made little progress in many years, and an opportunity to make identity easier for application builders - so we decided to try something radically new. However, as it’s the case for every bold departure from the established norm, we won’t know if we are heading in a promising direction without getting YOUR feedback, and a ton of it. Some examples of things we’d like to learn:

- Do you find Auth0 Explorer useful?
- Did you learn something about your tenant (or app) you didn’t realize until you saw a diagram of it?
- Do you see yourself using Auth0 Explorer every day or only in specific phases of the project?
- Would you use this tool to learn the basics too, or only for working with complex tenants?
- Are there other features or data you’d like visualized in there?
- What actions would you like to be able to perform directly in Auth0 Explorer?
- ...and literally anything else that comes to mind.

<include src="Vidyard" id="PJsse4Kxw1BQnU9RyLwa4T" />
 

We baked an easy mechanism for you to [share your thoughts](https://discord.com/invite/XbQpZSF2Ys) directly in Auth0 Explorer: just head to the lower left button bar, hit the middle button and jolt down your experience, comments, ideas, insights… anything you want to share. I can assure you we will treasure and ponder each and every one of your messages!

Charting New Territory with Auth0 Explorer

andrew-akers

I'm a product marketing manager who loves learning about technology, information security, and identity. My goal is to turn that knowledge into positive outcomes for our customers. Before Auth0, I was a product marketing manager at Cisco in the network security division. In my spare time, you can find me spending time with my family, reading, writing, and working on endless home improvement projects.

Product Marketing Manager

Andrew Akers

Tired of identity and authentication issues eating up your time and budget? There’s a simpler solution.

In any multi-brand company, enterprise architects (EAs) function like orchestra conductors overseeing the performance of each individual player, and simultaneously ensuring that every section is working together to play a unified symphony Yet these goals are particularly challenging for EAs in multi-brand media companies, where immense pressure exists to integrate and innovate across channels — and existing technology often isn’t flexible or powerful enough to meet these demands. In particular, one of the most common bottlenecks that EAs face is also one of the most critical for customer engagement: logging in.

Authentication and identity management at this stage can quickly become pain points for multi-brand companies, where maintenance dollars skyrocket, developer time is wasted, and opportunities for innovation and synergy across brands are lost.

Attempts to upgrade in-house processes, tailored to a patchwork of legacy systems, often unearth more (and more expensive) issues. However, by taking a more holistic approach, EAs have the option to create an identity management system that facilitates, rather than stymies, innovation and integration.

## Maintain a Single User Identity across Brands

Many multi-brand media companies covet a login that links users across brands and facilitates the creation of a unified user profile, since it has the potential to be both a money-saver and a money-maker. Implementing [Single Sign-On Authentication (SSO)](https://auth0.com/learn/how-to-implement-single-sign-on/) can support this.

With SSO, a user only needs to log in once to an application, and avoid having to enter their credentials again when switching to another brand, platform, or device. By implementing SSO across their network of brands, Finland's [Alma Media](https://auth0.com/learn/alma-media-sees-30-total-savings-seamless-brand-access/) achieved major cost savings and “reduced friction across their brand portfolio.”

![How Single Sign on works](https://images.ctfassets.net/23aumh6u8s0i/2KZu1xqmgHXSNnmVTo2rrv/adb3004b36a04aff84af0c93645aca4c/how-it-work-flow)

Unfortunately, coding SSO in-house is often a cumbersome process. If you’re working with an array of outdated, fragmented systems, it can take an enormous amount of time and effort to customize SSO across your stack. Auth0’s platform helps eliminate those headaches and allows EAs to turn on SSO in any application with the flip of a single switch.

![Enabling Single Sign On in your custom app](https://images.ctfassets.net/23aumh6u8s0i/1ickLlLsRsT5uZCmO5mF0D/3c958bd8d5a172e42f60099fda74f088/enabling-sso-in-your-custom-app-flow)

Of course, simplicity on its own isn’t enough, and any SSO solution for a multi-brand enterprise needs to be extensible. With that in mind, Auth0 makes it easy for your in-house developers to write [Rules](https://auth0.com/docs/rules) that tailor authentication to your needs. So, for example, a media company could utilize [multiple types of paywalls](https://auth0.com/blog/the-role-of-ciam-in-implementing-a-sound-paywall-strategy/) across brands without forcing users to log in multiple times. In addition to offering customers a simple way of navigating through their favorite content, Auth0’s SSO solution cuts maintenance costs by simplifying app integration and administration.

## Keep Ahead of Ever-Evolving Identity

Just as multi-brand media companies are constantly evolving to embrace new technologies, partners, and business units, as [Auth0 Principal Architect Vittorio Bertocci](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ug6D6Lwoh80&feature=youtu.be) shares in this brief video, best practices for identity management are in a constant state of change (and can be a “wild ride”. It’s a full-time job just to keep an identity management system equipped with the tools needed to stay ahead of hackers, interface smoothly with third parties, and provide customers with the identity control they expect. 

As Luis Salazar, co-founder of [Giving Compass](https://auth0.com/learn/giving-compass-case-study/) attests: “If we needed to code [identity] ourselves, we'd be at the mercy of continuous maintenance, because as the social plugins change their APIs, we need to revise our code."

Overhauling your identity management system with Auth0 frees you from the work of continuous patching. The universality of Auth0’s platform connects to any application, written in any language. Offloading authentication integrations to Auth0 means that you don’t have to worry about maintaining them in-house. This can translate to enormous financial savings by allowing your developers to work on their core product, and eliminating the need to hire more talent just for authentication and identity.

According to Mike Rogers, CTO and co-founder of [SiteMinder](https://auth0.com/blog/the-real-roi-of-auth0-part-4-maintenance/):

“Doing what Auth0 does in-house would cost hundreds of thousands of dollars each year, and that's just to manage the service and keep it running. To roll out additional features, that cost would rise directly in proportion to the number of features we would want to add and how many developers we would need to make it happen. Anytime Auth0 releases a feature, that's something we don't have to do ourselves.”

The savings offered by Auth0 aren’t merely anecdotal; a 2017 [Forrester report](https://auth0.com/forrester-total-economic-impact/) estimates that customers enjoy a minimum of “20% reduction in administration time and effort due to Auth0.”

## Outsource Your Regulatory Compliance

Identity management tends to be such a headache for EAs because the cost of getting it wrong is so high. A data breach can irrevocably tarnish a company’s image, and a slew of new international regulations threatens steep fines for companies that fail to comply. EAs in media have to be particularly mindful of compliance, as they often handle customers and content that span multiple nations, states, and sets of laws.

Increasingly, third-party security accreditations are the gold standard by which to judge whether an organization is handling data responsibly and legally. “Most Fortune 500 companies won’t sign deals if you don’t have the applicable certifications,” explains [Adam Nunn, Auth0’s Senior Manager of Governance Risk and Compliance](https://auth0.com/blog/the-real-roi-of-auth0-part-3-security/). However, earning and maintaining these certifications is expensive and labor-intensive. Annual costs to maintain certifications such as [SOC 2, HIPAA, and ISO27001](https://auth0.com/security/) can range from tens of thousands to millions of dollars.

By outsourcing accreditation to a trusted third-party such as Auth0, EAs can garner huge savings, not to mention peace of mind.

![Auth0 Certifications](https://images.ctfassets.net/23aumh6u8s0i/6Ke8qdEGmRoC4eG3PVwTac/ee2622de017bb88106852e5ee11205e5/auth0-certifications)

Auth0’s accreditations require annual re-certification to maintain, and we pass that investment on to our customers. “We're getting at least 50% ROI on the investment just for security alone," says [Sung Ho Choi, Co-Founder, fuboTV](https://auth0.com/learn/sports-centric-streaming-service-fubotv-sees-50-roi-just-auth0s-security/).

## Stop Maintaining, Start Innovating

As EAs know, “maintenance costs” aren’t as simple as a single line on a budget. Every hour of developer time spent struggling with issues like identity has hidden costs in terms of increased time-to-market, a missed chance to integrate with new technologies, and a fundamental distraction from the brand’s core product.

Conversely, partnering with a trusted third-party like Auth0 for identity management ensures that the critical issue of authentication is always updated to be as secure and compliant as possible, across all your brands. With less frustrating administration, EAs can be more effective leaders, spending less of their time and budgets on identity, and more on getting the big wins. If you’re interested in offloading this demanding work to dedicated experts, contact Auth0 to learn how you can start saving your time, energy, and budget.

<include src="asides/AboutAuth0" />

How Enterprise Architects Can Cut Maintenance Costs in Multi-brand Media

Why KuppingerCole says using identity as a point solution isn’t good enough


Digitization creates complexity. Your legacy systems must be depreciated, migrated, or modernized. Your data must be cleansed, consolidated, and used in new ways. Meanwhile, customers are engaging with you on new channels and [input-constrained devices](https://auth0.com/blog/oauth-device-flow-no-hassle-authentication-as-seen-on-tv/) but expect not to have to reset their password or sacrifice a good user experience. And your partners want to keep their access to critical data in your systems without interruption.

Identity can help – but only if you approach it the right way.

Identity management is often a critical missing piece when it comes to digitizing services. The main reason is that many companies use identity as a point solution for one area of the business. Think social login for a single app or profile enrichment functionality that never reaches the ears of the marketing team.

But digital transformation isn’t an isolated project. If you want the full value of identity, all digital services need to use the same identity platform. Identity should be a strategic service in your digital infrastructure that all applications can use again and again, without having to reinvent the wheel. Your developers will thank you, and you’ll get to market faster, innovate more, be more secure, and lower your maintenance costs.

You can develop an action plan for thinking about identity from a platform perspective in a new whitepaper from KuppingerCole and Auth0 titled, “[Do Identity Right – So Your Digital Business Strategy Succeeds.](https://auth0.com/resources/whitepapers/identity-digital-business-strategy)” 

In this post, we explore some of the key concepts. You can download the full whitepaper in [**English** here](https://auth0.com/resources/whitepapers/identity-digital-business-strategy) and [**German** here](https://auth0.com/resources/whitepapers/identitaeten-digitale-geschaeftsstratgie). 

## Introducing: Identity API Platforms

Digital transformation creates fragmented systems which ultimately need to talk to each other and to customers and partners if you want your digital business to succeed. APIs, or Application Program Interfaces, are a powerful solution, and this year KuppingerCole established a new IT market segment – Identity API Platforms – for vendors in this space.

![KuppingerCole IAM market segment](https://images.ctfassets.net/23aumh6u8s0i/3PEdsuBc6DbhoLfucQXT4c/57006aea0d2b17a2b90035d06daf1dae/iam-market-segment)
_Source: KuppingerCole_

Identity API Platforms support the requirements of IAM, Federation, IDaaS, CIAM, and more with a focus on being developer-centric. They are ideal for providing identity management in agile, DevOps, and more complex IT environments. “The resulting benefits of relying on an Identity API Platform are apparent,” says Martin Kuppinger, KuppingerCole founder and author of the whitepaper. “They allow for efficient implementation and re-use of identity services across all the various digital platforms and services an organization is creating.”

Kuppinger adds: “Auth0 counts amongst the leading providers of Identity API Platforms, with a cloud-based offering that delivers extensive API support specifically around the authentication and authorization of users.” 

We’re proud that Auth0 was also named an Overall Leader in KuppingerCole’s inaugural [Leadership Compass for Identity API Platforms](https://auth0.com/blog/auth0-named-overall-leader-kuppingercole-leadership-compass), which notes the strength of our developer tools, online support, and overall ecosystem.

## Architecting for Scale

“Today’s established software paradigm is centered around creating microservices with well-distinguished capabilities,” says Kuppinger. “This not only includes services for business functions, but also the underlying capabilities such as authentication, user management, encryption, or other identity and security services.” 

If you want to prepare your business for scale, avoid monolithic architectures. Instead, think in best-of-breed services that can talk to each other via APIs. Taking this approach for identity – exposing identity services as an API layer – will help you be more agile and flexible. Applications can consume these services instead of creating their own.

## Auth0 as Your Strategic Identity Platform

“Auth0 is well-positioned to become the identity platform for digital applications, for any type of organization.” – Martin Kuppinger, KuppingerCole

Whether you’re in a continued state of digital transformation or a digital native focused on building your core product, you understand the importance of answering who should have access to what. A centralized, platform-based identity solution will help you make your digital business strategy a reality. Auth0 is one of the leading global providers in this space and has been recognized by KuppingerCole as a [market and technology leader in CIAM](https://auth0.com/resources/webinars/kuppingercole-leadership-compass-for-ciam), and Identity-as-a-Service (IDaaS) and Identity API Platforms. 

[Download the whitepaper](https://auth0.com/resources/whitepapers/identity-digital-business-strategy) to learn more about doing identity right for the digital business.

[Register for the upcoming webinar](https://auth0.com/resources/upcoming-webinars/do-Identity-right-kuppingercole/) with Martin Kuppinger, Founder and Principal Analyst at KuppingerCole.


Building a Digital Business Needs a Platform-Approach to Identity

Inclusion in Security category for creating opportunity for solutions providers.

BELLEVUE, Wash. — August 14, 2019 — [Auth0](https://auth0.com/), a global leader in Identity-as-a-Service (IDaaS), today announced today that [CRN](http://www.crn.com)®, a brand of [The Channel Company](http://www.thechannelco.com/), has named Auth0 to its 2019 Emerging Vendors list in the Security category. This annual list honors technology suppliers that prioritize technological innovation and shape the IT channel's future. It recognizes channel-focused companies across seven categories: Cloud, Data Center, Security, Big Data, Internet of Things (IoT), and Storage.

CRN's Emerging Vendors list honors technology suppliers driving innovation across the IT channel. It also provides a valuable resource for solution providers looking to incorporate cutting-edge technology into their portfolios.

[Auth0 Partner Program's](https://auth0.com/partners/) global growth is attributed to the unceasing demand on partners to provide comprehensive identity management solutions, and Auth0's ability to service those needs with its Universal Identity Platform. The integral role that identity plays in any digital transformation project is driving the need for secure, scalable solutions that are quick to implement and easy to maintain. 

"The partners we work with are instrumental in their customers' digital transformation journeys. Therefore, it is of utmost importance to us to make sure we provide them with the best identity platform, partner enablement, and support to achieve overall success," said Eric Snyder, senior director of partners at Auth0. "We are thankful to be acknowledged by CRN for our contribution to the channel."

Emerging Vendors are vetted and selected by CRN's editorial team. They provide state-of-the-art technology to help solution providers meet complex IT market demands, achieve bottom-line results, and deliver best-in-class offerings.

"CRN's 2019 Emerging Vendors list recognizes new, rapidly growing vendors that are making significant IT channel contributions," said Bob Skelley, CEO of The Channel Company. "It honors groundbreaking vendors that provide sophisticated technology to drive channel growth — and remain committed to ongoing innovation to shape the channel for years to come."

The Emerging Vendors list will be featured in the August 2019 issue of CRN Magazine and online at [www.CRN.com/EmergingVendors](http://www.crn.com/EmergingVendors).

<include src="asides/AboutAuth0" />

## About The Channel Company 

The Channel Company is The Channel Catalyst. Backed by more than 30 years of IT channel experience, we drive innovation and growth across the technology landscape. The IT channel is our sole focus and passion, and we deliver maximum value to technology suppliers, solution providers, and IT professionals every day. To learn more, please visit [www.thechannelco.com](http://www.thechannelco.com). 

**Follow The Channel Company:** [Twitter](https://twitter.com/TheChannelCo), [LinkedIn](http://www.linkedin.com/company/the-channel-company) and [Facebook](https://www.facebook.com/TheChannelCompany?fref=ts)\
Copyright ©2019 The Channel Company, LLC. The Channel Company logo is a registered trademark of The Channel Company, LLC. All rights reserved.

### Media Contacts

Jeana Tahnk 
Corporate Communications 
Auth0 
[press@auth0.com](mailto:press@auth0.com)

Meghan Gardner 
Matter for Auth0 
[mgardner@matternow.com](mailto:mgardner@matternow.com) 

### The Channel Company Contact	

Jennifer Hogan 
The Channel Company 
jhogan@thechannelcompany.com

Auth0 Recognized on CRN’s 2019 Emerging Vendors List

jamie-hughes

At Fingerprint, Jamie solves EMEA customers' device intelligence challenges at each stage of the digital lifecycle (from ATO to credential stuffing to MFA friction and more) by quickly discerning their technical needs and demonstrating how Fingerprint can help them stop fraud and grow revenue. Jamie was previously a lead sales engineer at Auth0 and Beyond Identity. His years of experience in both the CIAM and device intelligence space enable him to help customers seamlessly reduce fraud and improve the user experience by combining best of breed identity and security solutions.

Solutions Engineer at Fingerprint

Jamie Hughes

How to configure Auth0 to provide identity for multi-tenant and single-tenant B2B SaaS applications

> EDITOR’S NOTE: Welcome to the EMEA Blog Takeover, where our EMEA employees take over the Auth0 blog to share success stories from the region. This week, you’ll meet our thought leaders across the pond, discover some of our most compelling use cases, and read about the trends that influence how we do business.

**TL;DR**: In this article, you will learn how Auth0 can support several configurations for single and multi-tenant applications. The setup in Auth0 for multi-tenancy support varies depending on how the multi-tenancy solution is offered to customers, and how much flexibility is required per tenant.

For context, I base the Auth0 configuration in this blog on a fictional product management solution called **Product0**, which is provided to nearly all of their customers as a multi-tenant SaaS application. Product0 also have some customers who opted for a dedicated instance of the solution, provided as a single-tenant app for each of these customers. 

### Terminology 

First let’s align on some basic terminology. Auth0 is a multi-tenanted solution. A ‘tenant’ is a logical isolation unit, borrowed from the term ‘software multi-tenancy.’ This refers to an architecture where a single instance of the software serves multiple tenants. No tenant can access the instance of another tenant, even though the software might be running on the same machine (hence the logical isolation). For more on tenants, see the [Auth0 glossary](https://auth0.com/docs/getting-started/the-basics).

Throughout this article we will refer to a tenant as an ‘Auth0 domain’. An Auth0 domain has a unique name such as “product0.auth0.com” and contains all of the configuration/data for a particular set of applications/use case.

Multi-Tenant = One instance, multiple customers

Single-Tenant = One instance, One customer

<include src="TweetQuote" quoteText="Auth0 is a multi-tenanted solution. A ‘tenant’ is a logical isolation unit, borrowed from the term ‘software multi-tenancy.’"/>

### Auth0’s domain model:

Auth0’s tenanted model of configuration provides a huge amount of flexibility for how Auth0 can be used with a business’s own multi-tenant architecture. Auth0’s domain (tenant) model allows for configurations to be completely isolated from other domains. This means that domains can provide complete separation for users, branding and authentication/authorization policies. Applications configured to use Auth0 for authentication/authorization would only be integrated with a single domain. You could also think of a domain as an “SSO Realm.”

### Scenarios

The two scenarios below use the Product0 example and the B2B use case has been kept relatively high level to provide a starting point when looking at how to utilise Auth0 for B2B applications. Connection types will vary depending on how each tenant will authenticate into the application. For the purpose of this article I will talk about database users and enterprise federation using Azure Active Directory.

## B2B SaaS Multi-Tenant Application

The most common scenario for B2B SaaS applications is where your B2B SaaS solution is provided to multiple customers as a multi-tenant application. The best way to architect Auth0 to support a multi-tenant application is to use a single Auth0 domain. The multi-tenant application would then be represented in Auth0 as a single application within the “Application” section. This means that the multi-tenant application will only use a single client_id to interact with Auth0. 

The diagram below shows the Auth0 architecture to support the Product0 multi-tenant app:

![Auth0 architecture to support the Product0 multi-tenant app](https://images.ctfassets.net/23aumh6u8s0i/2UIkMeU6Ha4OEAgInxGYQa/7623d40c5e5515520779e350dbfb5a3c/auth0-architecture-2)

When to use this option:

* A shared multi-tenant app with a single login page (all tenants log in through the same login page, same domain)
* All users across all tenants exist in a single database (Auth0 database connection or custom database connection)
* You wish to use Home Realm Discovery (HRD) for any enterprise connections
* Per customer branding on the login page is not required
* An end user may belong to multiple tenants and therefore need to login to more than one tenant.

Again, Auth0 is a multi-tenant solution, meaning users from different customers all login through the ‘manage.auth0.com’ page, which is Auth0 branded (non-customer specific) and presents all login options to all customers. The Auth0 management dashboard is configured in the same way as the Product0 example above. This setup allows for users to belong to more than one tenant which is a very likely in Auth0.

As this is a multi-tenant app and many customers will be using the same shared instance, it is vital to be able to associate many different connections (methods of authentication) with a single application. This could be a database or one of many different enterprise connections, all of which you can easily configure in Auth0. 

In some cases, multi-tenant applications can use a separate URL either as a subdomain or as a path configured for a tenant. For example a multi-tenant application might use URLs in the form of: `https://{customer}.product0.com` or `https://www.product0.com/{customer}`. When a user arrives at your application with the vanity URL, you can pick up that `tenant` value and pass it as the `login_hint` in the `authorize` request. The login_hint can then be used drive tenant logic within the [universal login](https://auth0.com/docs/universal-login) page and [rules](https://auth0.com/docs/rules) engine. This could also be achieved using the `connection` parameter if a tenant is only using one connection.

**Important**: _For this scenario, we’d recommend that you only use a single database connection when working with a multi-tenant app configured in Auth0. Although multiple database connections can be configured against a single application, the connection_id is required in order for Auth0 to know which database to authenticate the user against. Auth0 does not attempt authentication against all database connections enabled until it finds the valid user. Using multiple database connections would mean logic would have to be implemented on the login page to determine which connection the user belonged to and set the “connection” parameter as this value before authentication was attempted._

![Auth0 Login Modal](https://images.ctfassets.net/23aumh6u8s0i/5PtsFxH14uRRtaA7z5wEvh/3ba46ce3c9c8c09e17b51e1f4efaf621/auth0-login-page)

Example login page for the Product0 multi-tenant app with home realm discovery being used for a particular customer.

When working with a multi-tenant app, each organization might use different identity providers (IdPs) such as ADFS, Azure AD, G Suite, or username/password stores. Email domains can be configured against each enterprise connection as a way of routing authentication requests. This is known in Auth0 as home realm discovery (HRD). When a user is authenticating using Auth0 Lock and they enter an email address with a domain which is configured against an enterprise connection, the password field will automatically be disbaled and the email will be associated with the IdP connection. Note that Lock has built-in support for HRD. When building a custom login form, this functionality would need to be implemented.

## B2B SaaS Single Tenant

In the case where a single customer has a dedicated instance, single tenant, Auth0 provides the flexibility to manage single tenants within a single Auth0 domain. To support this model effectively, the single tenant will have its own application in Auth0, meaning it has a unique client_id. The assumption here is each single tenant app is hosted on a subdomain for each customer. 

The architecture diagram below shows how you can model Auth0 to support the multi-tenant app and each single-tenant instance:

![Auth0 architecture diagram](https://images.ctfassets.net/23aumh6u8s0i/1MkMVZLgIJ4tjZ5NH2fY9g/a1924acad7b01943f8e7d2b50a511a75/architecture-diagram)

The model above assumes that for the single tenant applications users can only belong to one tenant, each application is mapped to a separate database connection meaning that users of each customer would be logically separated. As password policies and username policies are set per database connection, it is therefore possible to support a different password policy per customer, or be able to use both email and username making this model a great choice if this was a requirement for any of your customers.

<include src="TweetQuote" quoteText="Auth0 provides the flexibility to manage single tenants within a single Auth0 domain."/>

When to use this option:

* A single-tenant application dedicated to a single customer
* Customer branding on the login page is required
* Only connections configured for the customer should be displayed to the end users of this customer

In the case that a user could belong to more than one single instance tenant or a single instance tenant and a tenant within the multi-tenant instance then a single database connection should be used to store all users.

Let's consider the following requirements you might want to provide for each tenant:

* A customer branded login page
* Show only the associated login options for a customer (i.e. Show login with Azure AD only to the customers configured Azure AD domain)

The branding on the login page can then be driven by the client_id parameter, which is sent from the tenant instance (client/application) to Auth0 in the authorize request.

`https://{YOUR_AUTH0_DOMAIN}/authorize?client_id=[...]`

The client_id is then available within the universal login page and can be accessed via the config object ‘config.clientID’ to drive branding logic. 

![Auth0 Branding Login Page](https://images.ctfassets.net/23aumh6u8s0i/26Q7IeOpTKtr4DeUddJW6G/7b6bc698d98ca2e39584113c9f266d4f/branding-login)

Example of a login page with customer specific branding and restricted to only applicable connections (Azure AD) driven by the client_id parameter.

Connections can be enabled/disbaled for each application in the application settings, meaning that only a specific connection(s) relevant to a tenant would be available on the universal login page. 

![Enabled/disabled connections for Auth0](https://images.ctfassets.net/23aumh6u8s0i/QfecfBAzPcXeBIaZQ8l5h/3c6a19d53791f8cba71dae6b3a952cd3/enabled-disabled-connections)

If the connection is known ahead of time (before redirecting to the Auth0 universal login page) or you implement a [custom login UI](https://auth0.com/docs/libraries/when-to-use-lock#when-to-implement-lock-vs-a-custom-ui) you have full control over the authentication flow. You can choose the connection based on context (like the given email address) or by asking the user, then provide the connection parameter to one of Auth0.js' [login methods](https://auth0.com/docs/libraries/auth0js/v9#login). 

Passing the name of an enterprise connection as the `connection` parameter in the authorize request will by-pass the Auth0 universal login page and redirect the user to the upstream IdP login page. E.g. 

`https://{YOUR_AUTH0_DOMAIN}/authorize?client_id=[...]&connection=[...]`

This would be recommended when the tenant can be identified (maybe via Vanity URLs or sub domain) and only one connection is applicable. 

## Key Features in Auth0 to Support B2B SaaS Applications

### Enterprise Federation 

Many customers today will leverage their own federated directory (IdP) to authenticate into third-party applications. This removes the need for the customer’s end users to manage a separate set of credentials. Auth0 supports several “Enterprise” connections for customers who wish to use their own federated IdP to provide SSO (Single Sign On). 

Please see more details on enterprise connections [here](https://auth0.com/docs/identityproviders#enterprise).

### Home Realm Discovery (HRD)

With Auth0 you can offer users multiple methods of authenticating. This is important with SaaS or multi-tenant apps, where many organizations use a single app. Each organization might use different IdPs such as ADFS, Azure AD, G Suite, or username/password stores. 

[Lock](https://auth0.com/docs/libraries/lock) has built in functionality for identity provider selection also known as Home Realm Discovery (HRD). Email domains can be configured against each enterprise connection as a way of routing authentication requests. When a user is authenticating using Auth0 Lock and they enter an email address with a domain which is configured against an enterprise connection, the password field will automatically be disbaled and the email will be associated with the IdP connection.

Please find more information on HRD [here](https://auth0.com/docs/libraries/lock/v11/selecting-the-connection-for-multiple-logins).

### Delegated administration

It is fairly typical for smaller customers to use database users over enterprise federation, meaning that users for each tenant need to be managed. Usually this would be seen as an administration exercise, which the B2B solution provider would not want to own, and therefore would want to delegate this to the end customer. 

Auth0 provides a [delegated administration dashboard](https://auth0.com/docs/extensions/delegated-admin/v3) which exposes the Users tab of the Auth0 dashboard allowing you to easily and securely grant limited access for privileged user accounts. The dashboard exposes a number of hooks allowing you to provide a customized and fine-grained experience.

Alternatively you can build your own delegated administration UI on top of the [Auth0 Management API](https://auth0.com/docs/api/management/v2). The Management API exposes endpoints to manage (create/read/edit/delete) user accounts, reset passwords, MFA management and Authorization (manage a user’s role and permissions). 

### Authorization

Auth0’s Role Based Access Control (RBAC) can provide Authorization capabilities within your B2B applications to control access to content/actions. More details on Authorization capabilities in Auth0 can be found [here](https://auth0.com/docs/authorization/concepts/rbac).

### Authentication and Authorization policies per tenant

Auth0’s extensible rules engine allows multi-factor authentication (MFA) challenges to be triggered based on the [context](https://auth0.com/docs/rules/references/context-object) of the authentication. As part of the context exposed in rules, both the application (client_id) and the connection are available meaning that MFA can be configured per customer/tenant for both scenarios discussed above in this article.

More information on contextual MFA can be found [here](https://auth0.com/docs/multifactor-authentication/custom).

Using the same context object as mentioned above, rules can be used to drive custom logic per tenant, this could be authorization logic specific to one tenant or as another example, include custom claims in the Access Token/ID Token.

## Not covered in this Article

In some B2B use cases, a single Auth0 domain could be used for each tenant/customer. Typically this would be used when each tenant is provided as a fully white labelled instance of the solution, meaning one of more of the following (and not limited to) is required:

* Fully white-labeled customer-specific branding
* Custom domain per customer
* Segregation of user data between tenants
* Isolated authentication policies 

### Final note

The guidance and examples detailed in this blog were focused on a high level B2B use case for the fictional solution, Product0. For a more detailed in-depth discussion on specific multi-tenancy requirements please [contact sales](mailto:sales@auth0.com).

<include src="asides/AboutAuth0" />

Using Auth0 to Power Your B2B Multi/Single-Tenant SaaS Solution

Auth0 gives you the tools and expertise to build the IAM solution that’s right for you – not us.

Creating modern applications can be like working with Legos — get the right set of instructions and you can build precisely what's on the box.

That can work for simple scenarios, but half the fun of Legos (and of business) is making what YOU want to build.

In other words, whatever you want to make — [easy integrations for multiple business units](https://auth0.com/learn/new-business-accessed-cimpress-platform-5-minutes-auth0/), a product that will [connect expert medical staff and patients globally](https://auth0.com/learn/act-md-sees-2x-dev-savings-auth0/), or [seamless customer experiences](https://auth0.com/learn/jetprivilege-case-study/) - it's unlikely to match exactly what your identity service provider has created for you out-of-the-box. Your vision, your execution, your customers are all bigger than that — you're bigger than a box, so we won't put you in one.

![You're bigger than a box, so we won't put you in one](https://images.ctfassets.net/23aumh6u8s0i/34pl8N4OEbbu63V2ibsmPC/95db6f8792ec661e07547dec35e2604a/you-are-bigger-than-a-box)

One-size-fits-all solutions assume that all organizations have the same challenges, goals, legacy infrastructure, team skills, etc. Only you know what your organization's challenges and goals are.

But identity probably isn't your main expertise. Why would it be? You're great at fintech or media or B2B Saas, so you might not realize that identity is a spot where you can increase conversion rates and [streamline your customer experience across multiple brands](https://auth0.com/learn/alma-media-sees-30-total-savings-seamless-brand-access/) — or realize that some intriguing ideas face security risks. If you choose Auth0 for identity, part of our job is to give you the right advice and tools to support your vision, but you are always in control.

## POC on Your Terms

Part of that control begins with the proof-of-concept (POC). You shouldn't have to wait around for months to learn whether or not a provider can handle your particular use case. Figuring out if Auth0 will work for you is free, no credit card required. And we support you with [docs](https://auth0.com/docs/), [quickstarts](https://auth0.com/docs/quickstarts) and our [Auth0 Community](https://community.auth0.com/).

Finn AI, an Auth0 customer and partner, was working on creating a conversational AI for banking providers and needed to know if Auth0 was up to the security, regulatory, and speed challenges. "Our first proof of concept around using Auth0 was done by an engineer over his weekend because he was excited about it. We had a 48-hour turnaround on that first POC of Auth0 within an SDK environment," says Robin Monks, Director of Engineering, [Finn AI](https://auth0.com/learn/finn-ai-saves-10-5-ongoing-engineering-time-auth0/).

Finn AI's experience is no anomaly. We frequently hear from customers after they've had the opportunity to explore Auth0 on their own terms.

## Helping You Do More, Go Farther

We often find that our collaborative architecture process surfaces business choices. We always present options that empower decision makers within an organization — not us.

Take the recent example of a large global industrial company looking to ensure that each business unit can handle identity independently, but remains within the organization's overall guardrails. We helped the organization create a B2B2C hybrid solution that allowed them to decide on their particular mix of control and freedom, including multi-tenants that could be unified across business units while requiring universal multi-factor authentication.

## Fixing Challenges Quickly

Not every app is born in a green field. Identity seems like it ought to be simple, but is actually really complex. Whether you're dealing with connecting multiple legacy applications across geographies with different data regulation requirements or rapidly shifting business needs, Auth0 can help you adapt by handling that complexity for you. From trickle migrations that can help you seamlessly move users without forcing password resets to [effortlessly managing scalability spikes](https://auth0.com/learn/sports-centric-streaming-service-fubotv-sees-50-roi-just-auth0s-security/), Auth0 can help you solve problems before they happen.

Auth0 helps [Siteminder](https://auth0.com/learn/siteminder-enhances-experience-security-30000-hotels-auth0/) manage more than 87 million hotel bookings each year (a rate of 166 per minute), engaging guests through a full range of [third-party applications](https://www.siteminder.com/siteminder-exchange/?utm_source=referral_pr&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=sm-201901-pr-global-auth0-case-study&offer=none&productinterest=sm) including mobile messaging, customized emails, mobile key, and feedback tools. Siteminder CTO and Co-founder Mike Rogers says they're also dealing with a "land grab" market situation and Auth0 helps manage that complexity. "Auth0 is pretty much invisible," says Rogers. "And, I think it works well when you are that transparent. We don't have to worry about it because login and password management is now a solved problem for us."

Rogers goes on to talk about the thousands of dollars Siteminder would need to invest yearly to remain ahead of industry identity changes. "Anytime Auth0 releases a feature, that's something we don't have to do ourselves. Ultimately, that benefits not only us, but the hotel customers that rely on us to continue supporting them through our own enhancements and innovations."

## Respecting Your Vision, Execution, and Customers

At Auth0, we're excited by the complexity of identity and the wide range of business challenges we help our customers solve every day. We do that by fully respecting our customers vision, execution, and end users. At Auth0, we give you the tools and expertise to build the identity access management (IAM) solution that's right for you, not what's right for us.

If you'd like to learn more about how Auth0 can give you the tools and expertise to build the identity access management (IAM) solution that's right for you, not what's right for us, please reach out to an [Auth0 resource](mailto:sales@auth0.com).

<include src="asides/AboutAuth0" />

You’re Bigger than a Box, So We Won’t Put You in One

Identity management solutions will help protect your platform and end users.

Cross-industry fraud is on the rise. According to the fourth annual [LexisNexis Fraud Mitigation Study](https://risk.lexisnexis.com/insights-resources/research/2018-fraud-study), an increasing number of organizations are encountering fraud that has moved beyond its initial source and is causing damage in multiple arenas.

In 2018 89% of fraud professionals reported cases of cross-industry fraud — a five-point jump over the 84% who reported the same in 2017.

Hackers target particular industries — including insurance, financial services, health care, and even travel — that deal with a high volume of sensitive customer information. In many cases, companies in these spaces don't yet have adequate security protocols in place. As one example, [less than half of insurance CEOs](https://home.kpmg/content/dam/kpmg/ae/pdf/closing-the-gap.pdf)_ believe their teams are fully prepared for a cybersecurity event.

Once hackers obtain information from these targets, they’re able to use it to gain access to other higher-value accounts or platforms and conduct malicious activity across organizations.

This piece highlights the many, complex risks of cross-industry fraud — and offers solutions to help business leaders secure their organizations and end users.

<include src="TweetQuote" quoteText="In 2018 89% of fraud professionals reported cases of cross-industry fraud — a five-point jump over the 84% who reported the same in 2017."/>

### Cross-industry fraud can have extraordinary effects on end users

The uptick in cross-industry fraud presents a cascade of problems for company management. It's not always something they can isolate and solve for independently.

To start, these types of breaches often have extraordinary, negative effects on end users — relationships business leaders are trying hard to nurture. The ripple effect that occurs when identifying information stolen and used in cross-industry fraud makes it very difficult to detect where the breach originated and where it could move next.

This situation is further complicated by the fact that [83%](https://www.cyclonis.com/report-83-percent-users-surveyed-use-same-password-multiple-sites/) of people use the same password for multiple sites. In many cases, hackers who obtain a username and password are able to move quickly by recycling them.

[Credential stuffing](https://auth0.com/blog/credential-stuffing-is-a-persistent-threat-to-your-users/) and [credit card skimming and shimming](https://www.experian.com/blogs/ask-experian/shimming-is-the-latest-credit-card-scam/) are two primary means by which hackers take sensitive data from its initial source and use it across numerous platforms.

In our [prior post](https://auth0.com/blog/credential-stuffing-is-a-persistent-threat-to-your-users/), we described how cyber thieves use credential stuffing for a mass of login attempts at once. While these attacks are only successful about [3%](https://qz.com/1329961/hackers-account-for-90-of-login-attempts-at-online-retailers/) of the time, they quickly add up. According to Quartz, [91%](https://qz.com/1329961/hackers-account-for-90-of-login-attempts-at-online-retailers/) of login attempts on e-commerce sites are credential-stuffing attacks, followed by 60% on airline sites.

->![Share of login attempts that are credential stuffing attacks](https://images.ctfassets.net/23aumh6u8s0i/3ajfvBhlRdq2fXi0KRDXxD/c239e52657b2f8e9a556b5cfd0d2272c/login-attempts)<-

[_Image via Quartz_](https://qz.com/1329961/hackers-account-for-90-of-login-attempts-at-online-retailers/)

[Credit card skimming and shimming](https://www.experian.com/blogs/ask-experian/shimming-is-the-latest-credit-card-scam/) (a newer technique designed to lift information from chip cards) is another method. When consumers make a purchase or visit an ATM, hackers are able to obtain credit card information and then sell that information on the dark web or make fraudulent purchases in numerous other industries.

In all sectors, cross-industry fraud brings with it a hefty price tag. In the same [LexisNexis study](https://risk.lexisnexis.com/insights-resources/research/2018-fraud-study), 80% of organizations reported that cross-industry fraud cases took a moderate to high financial toll on their businesses; more than half said they experienced extreme or high financial impact.

In turn, these unexpected costs can translate into an increase in the price of services for customers — a vicious cycle that punishes them rather than the hackers who are causing the problems in the first place. When you're trying to build trust, fraud in any form — even if it originated elsewhere — can do you harm.

### Improving identity management to reduce cross-industry fraud

As cross-industry fraud continues to increase, it’s up to organizations to put security measures in place to protect their data and their consumers from these sorts of attacks.

**1. CLOSELY MONITOR ALL USERS WITHIN YOUR SYSTEMS**

A recent survey unveiled that [62% of employees](https://www.esecurityplanet.com/network-security/62-percent-of-employees-have-access-to-data-they-shouldnt-be-able-to-see.html) recognize that they have access to company data they believe they shouldn’t see.

One of the best ways to protect business-critical information from unwanted eyes begins with implementing better [user management](https://auth0.com/user-management). Cutting-edge user management tools and processes will help you exercise greater control over who’s able to access business-critical information.

->![Auth0 Dashboad view](https://images.ctfassets.net/23aumh6u8s0i/3iyjcUTaJiDXqwSgFTDkMn/e621d2e4bb54280c4f9377850815ab53/auth0-dashboard)<-

A solution like [Auth0](https://auth0.com/), for example, allows your admins to closely track all of the users working with the company's systems and flag erratic behaviors, such as multiple failed login attempts. These admins can also grant permissions for specific users to access more sensitive data — while restricting the permissions of others.

**2. INVEST IN ANOMALY DETECTION TO IDENTIFY SYSTEM-WIDE THREATS**

It can take a long time to detect security breaches or threats. [According to the Ponemon Institute](https://securityboulevard.com/2018/07/survey-finds-breach-discovery-takes-an-average-197-days/), discovery takes an average of 197 days, which exposes your organization and your users to many vulnerabilities.

Having a solution like [anomaly detection](https://auth0.com/docs/anomaly-detection) in place can alert you to unusual activity immediately.

->![Anomaly Detection view on Auth0](https://images.ctfassets.net/23aumh6u8s0i/1E5ZE61rzHUyv4Bj4ZbcRE/c370d6c571de65fb55944b2dcfaf0602/anomaly-detection-view)<-

Auth0’s anomaly detection feature allows for brute-force protection and breached password detection, both of which you can easily turn on and customize from the main Dashboard view.

Brute force protection mitigates the risk that a hacker will push their way into your system by repeatedly iterating on a password until s/he finds the correct match, and breached password detection notifies your users when their credentials have been leaked by a third party data breach. In both scenarios, admins can block access and investigate the situation further.

<include src="TweetQuote" quoteText="Auth0’s anomaly detection feature allows for brute-force protection and breached password detection."/>

**3. DO AWAY WITH PASSWORDS**

While the burden of identity protection falls largely on a company’s IT team, some of the effort rests with your users and customers. In an ideal world, they’d [update their passwords when prompted](https://www.pcmag.com/news/362566/35-percent-of-people-never-change-their-passwords) (according to a new study by The National Institute of Standards and Technology) to ones that are longer and harder-to-guess.

Yet when users do make password changes, they’re often just slightly altered versions of their previous passwords (think something like “Password1” instead of just “Password”) — which leaves them just as vulnerable to attacks. [A new report from SplashData](https://www.securitymagazine.com/articles/89694-the-top-100-worst-passwords) shows that the two most popular passwords in 2018 were simply “123456” and “password” — essentially an open door for cyber theft.

Rather than counting on your users to keep themselves secure, institute streamlined login processes that also offer added security.

[Auth0’s Passwordless](https://auth0.com/passwordless) allows users to log in using codes that are sent to their mobile phones — meaning they don’t need to remember or frequently update a password. What if people still insist on passwords? [Auth0’s Breached Password Detection](https://auth0.com/breached-passwords) will alert you and your users immediately if their credentials are leaked.

### Update your legacy systems to mitigate the risk of cross-industry fraud.

Fraud isn’t going anywhere. Even as security measures improve and technology advances, hackers will be motivated to rise to the challenge of stealing information and conducting malicious activity.

It’s up to you to make it as tough as possible for them to do so and protect your organization, your users, and your peers across industries who could be impacted by a breach.

Implementing a solution like Auth0 (https://auth0.com/) bolsters your security while it frees up your company’s time and resources so that you can focus on the tasks and projects that directly contribute to your revenue growth.

<include src="asides/AboutAuth0" />

---

Cross-Industry Fraud is on the Rise — Here’s What You Can Do

We break down the definition and offer ways to develop a solution that fits your needs.

Not that long ago, knowing who your business was interacting with was straightforward. You interacted with them directly. You shared a meeting room, shook their hand, or spoke with them over the phone.

But as the world becomes increasingly digital, tracking various users (customers and partners like vendors and consultants) is far less cut-and-dried.

Today, teams must find ways to understand who is accessing their systems and working with their data and, even more importantly, whether or not they’re actually supposed to be there. Put simply, companies must develop their own identity infrastructure.

## What Exactly Is Identity Infrastructure?

To create the right identity infrastructure for your team, it’s important to define what identity management means in the context of your business.

At Auth0, we define identity management as the cornerstone that glues internal teams and apps together in a single framework.

![Identity Infrastructure allows an organization to scale in a more secure and sustainable way](https://images.ctfassets.net/23aumh6u8s0i/1jLQlfdOeXRbAdsrWrXg2U/8319f8524e063e7416c367e2614ba0f8/what-is-identity-infrastructure-logo)

As organizations become larger and more distributed, and information is dispersed in more and more complex formats, companies often rush to implement systems and apps in an effort to be more connected and efficient. What most companies lack, however, is an underlying identity infrastructure.

Identity infrastructure allows an organization to scale in a more secure and sustainable way. It is the combination of technologies and processes that helps you manage the digital identities of every one of your users at any point in time. The best identity infrastructure is extensible and will evolve alongside your team.

## The Challenge with Identity Infrastructure

The importance of having a solid identity infrastructure in place can’t be denied. Unfortunately, both small businesses and larger enterprises often treat it as an afterthought.

“Organizations are flocking to cloud services and mobile devices to cut costs and boost productivity,” writes George Moraetes, in an [article for SecurityIntelligence by IBM](https://securityintelligence.com/meeting-identity-and-access-management-challenges-in-the-era-of-mobile-and-cloud/). 

“Despite the benefits, these technologies exacerbate the challenge of verifying identities and managing access to applications and data by consumers, employees and business partners from multiple devices and locations,” he adds.

> _“[Cloud] technologies exacerbate the challenge of verifying identities and managing access to applications and data by consumers, employees and business partners from multiple devices and locations.”_

Many businesses jump on cloud solutions and advancements without giving necessary thought to their identity infrastructure. This means they rely on [legacy systems](https://auth0.com/blog/how-do-i-modernize-my-legacy-system/) and antiquated processes for identity management, which can lead to headaches and security messes down the line. Older technologies can bring unnecessary redundancies — and companies miss out on opportunities to become more efficient and innovative. 

## How to Bring Your Own Identity Infrastructure into the Modern Age

The good news is that there are concrete steps that teams can take to either establish or improve their own identity infrastructure — both with their business partners and customers. What's better, you don't need separate systems for each category of users. The same identity infrastructure can underlie both.

### 1. MONITOR AND MANAGE ALL USERS WITH ONE CENTRAL VIEW.

Despite growing concerns about security, far too many companies don’t actually have clear insight into how users are behaving within their system.

With a solution like [Auth0’s Dashboard](https://auth0.com/docs/getting-started/dashboard-overview), you can observe all activity, broken down by individual user, at any point in time.

![Auth0 Dashboard View](https://images.ctfassets.net/23aumh6u8s0i/7sbXQ9SWpmPS7HuKh9pGhE/427d1c43629461957d5c506e8e9e535d/auth0-dashboard)

With a dashboard view, you can also quickly make improvements to your system with options like:

* API registration
* Email template configuration
* Anomaly detection (which will instantly alert admins to suspicious activity)
* Basic identity management tasks like blocking or logging in as a user to help troubleshoot

A dashboard can improve the entire login experience for your users. A reported [25% of users](https://phys.org/news/2017-06-customers-passwords-business.html) forget their passwords daily and often need to use the system reset. According to Gartner, between 20% and 50% of help desk calls are for password resets, and [Forrester Research estimates](https://searchenterprisedesktop.techtarget.com/tip/Resetting-passwords-in-the-enterprise-without-the-help-desk) that the average cost of a single password reset done by a help desk is a whopping $70. 

Needless to say, having a straightforward place to manage both your application and your users that goes above and beyond passwords will save you and your team hassles, time, and, as a result, money. 

### 2. CONSIDER OUTSOURCING YOUR IDENTITY NEEDS.

Engineering teams balance hundreds of tasks every day to simply keep their systems up and running. If you're in the middle of a new product rollout, you need all hands on deck to be sure you deliver something of value for your customers on time. In these situations, outdated identity infrastructure shouldn't weigh you down.

[Outsourcing your identity needs can give you peace of mind](https://auth0.com/blog/cloud-scale-thinking-from-day-one-for-your-saas-products/) — knowing that you're working with the latest software out there and a team that's dedicated to this 24/7 (not juggling identity management with building and shipping new products, sourcing and investing in new tools, and managing junior developers).

Identity is a complex and quickly evolving discipline. An expert team like Auth0 can simplify it for you and give your team more time back to focus on tasks that are clearly tied to your bottom line.

### 3. STAY UP TO DATE WITH NEW SECURITY REGULATIONS.

Experience and ease of use are undeniably important considerations in identity infrastructure. But it’s not all about the bells and whistles. When you’re dealing with user identities, there are ever-evolving security concerns and regulations that you need to keep up with—from [GDPR requirements](https://auth0.com/gdpr/) to state regulations like the [California Consumer Privacy Act](https://auth0.com/blog/brace-yourself-the-gdpr-ripple-effect-in-california/) and even industry standards like [HIPAA](https://auth0.com/learn/why-hipaa-compliance-is-vital-your-business/).

That adds an extra layer of complexity to your identity infrastructure, which again speaks to the importance of finding a platform or solution that prioritizes security and compliance for you.

[Auth0](https://auth0.com/) supports industry-wide authentication standards and ensures compliance with the growing requirements of numerous leading organizations. 

## Identity Infrastructure Needs to Be a Priority

As the world becomes more connected and security concerns mount, businesses can no longer afford for identity infrastructure to be an afterthought.

But as a leader in your organization, you want to focus on increasing returns, not on establishing these processes and cleaning up security messes.

Building better identity infrastructure — or partnering with an expert third-party provider — will give you a stronger foundation for long-term growth. 

Fortunately, outsourcing the creation of your identity infrastructure gives you peace of mind while also freeing up your time to tackle projects that directly impact your bottom line. 

<include src="asides/AboutAuth0" />

---

What is Identity Infrastructure?

auziros:bobby-johnson

Bobby is a full-stack developer, advocate, and evangelist at Auth0. He is a passionate engineer with an interest in learning and teaching new technologies, using open source software, and engaging the greater software development community. His experience ranges from building line-of-business applications for financial professionals with Russell Investments and Milliman to distributed social content apps with Cheezeburger and Steller.

Developer Advocate Engineer

Bobby Johnson

Learn about the four-year-long journey Auth0 took to deliver the tools needed by both field engineers and our customers to implement last mile identity solutions quickly.

Previously, we wrote about the emerging pattern of [Serverless Extensibility](https://auth0.com/blog/why-is-serverless-extensibility-better-than-webhooks/). Examples of the concept are popping up in many of the services you use daily like [Twilio](https://www.twilio.com/functions) and here at [Auth0](https://auth0.com/). In this post, I will talk about challenges our customers were facing with our Auth0 Identity product, and how this led us down the path toward implementing the [extensibility](https://auth0.com/extensibility) pattern in a variety of features.

## The problem

![NASA Engineers working on MAVEN](https://images.ctfassets.net/23aumh6u8s0i/3KQXnuCX6H4EROaqBq3hRh/e3e24c8007258b4f7b45f0aef852cebd/engineers_working_on_the_high-gain_antenna_of_the_MAVEN_spacecraft)

*Placed into the public domain by [NASA](http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/multimedia/images/?s=1) using [Creative Commons](https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)*

In the early days at Auth0, there were two groups: Core and Field Engineering. Core focused on the core functionality of the authentication product, and the field engineers helped customers use the product in their applications. The company was discovering what customers needed in the product.

Our customers' focus was on the authentication transaction. A lot of interesting features can attach to the process of someone trying to login:

- Profile Enrichment
- Progressive Profiling
- Authorization
- Claims Transformation

Customers will come up with an unlimited supply of feature requests. We could not possibly build every feature at once.

Moreover, sometimes building features into the core product for customers is not the right approach. We needed a way to try ideas out. An idea may sound great, but in practice be problematic. Investing core engineering resources to these ideas is very expensive.

> **"The primary use case for extensibility at Auth0 was to empower field engineers to work on the last mile solutions for the customer without involving core engineering."** 
> Eugenio Pace - Co-Founder, CEO

If every interaction with a customer involved identifying an idea, putting it in the backlog and coming back to them at a later date, it would add friction to the process and turn customers away.

For example, we had customers who wanted to do profile enrichment. They used services like [FullContact](https://www.fullcontact.com/) to look up a new user and grab related information about them such as their company, role, and social media accounts. FullContact is just one service as there are several others. We had prospects that were depending on these capabilities to have confidence in using us as a platform, and without it would not become customers.

## Custom code extensibility

![NASA's "Webb-cam" Captures Engineers at Work on Webb at Johnson Space Center](https://images.ctfassets.net/23aumh6u8s0i/6UpPFk1QXmAs5xequW3Wpj/23c899dfcde145fb664480ffddd2cd9f/34827899312_571fa2a976_k)

*[NASA](https://www.flickr.com/photos/gsfc/34827899312) licensed under [Creative Commons 2.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/)*

To solve this problem, we introduced a method of adding custom code into the platform that could be defined by customers. The inspiration for custom code extensibility as a solution came from spreadsheets. Excel has significant functionality out of the box, but you can always add a function, macro or calculation that better reflects your goal. Moreover, you can write them yourself directly in Excel, removing the dependency on Microsoft engineers.

> **"We wanted a similar experience for our users. A user should be able to log in to the dashboard, write a small amount of node.js code that executes later during authorization transactions."** 
> Eugenio Pace - Co-Founder, CEO

Like Excel, we wanted to offer users a really simple experience for customizing our product through code. We believed a user should be able to write their logic in an editor, debug it in place, and make it live in production, all without having to stand up a service. This differed from the prevalent approach at the time for dealing with customization through webhooks, which were hosted by the user.

We quickly implemented an MVP to prove out the concept. It created a process boundary between the core Auth0 stack and the customer's code. It primarily prevented well behaved, well-intentioned code from accidentally bringing down the authorization service or other sandboxed code.

Although the MVP had its limitations, it proved that the user experience for customization could be greatly improved, aligning well with our philosophy of "Identity made simple for developers."

## Evolving customization features

![NASA engineers cleaning mirror with carbon dioxide snow](https://images.ctfassets.net/23aumh6u8s0i/2NQmBSwzenRP0r4HFvU0hZ/1b0447fd2fa9bc307d91d3772f94f6c9/17402277412_5e2834517c_k)

*[NASA](https://www.flickr.com/photos/gsfc/17402277412) licensed under [Creative Commons 2.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/)*

Custom code extensibility is exposed in our customer dashboard in three ways: Auth0 Rules, Hooks, and Extensions.

**[Auth0 Rules](https://auth0.com/docs/rules/current)** were the first publically available use case where our customers could easily add custom functionality to their authorization flow directly in the dashboard. Rules execute after authentication but before authorization. We offer a gallery of Rule templates that make it easy for customers to address common scenarios out of the box. Because Rules are code though, customers can easily customize the logic further to meet their specific needs.

A customer clicks a button to add a new Rule, selects one from a set of standard templates which they can customize with a simple editor right in their browser. When saved, the Rule is active on their account for all authentication requests.

![Rules UI](https://images.ctfassets.net/23aumh6u8s0i/A8nlyZBGaECLAhpZ2k9CK/892d84cff88e39e3a51a370ba302964b/rules)

Rules allow you to easily customize and extend Auth0's capabilities. They can be chained together for modular coding and can be turned on and off individually.

Rules were really powerful but were limited only to login. Once customers got a taste of rules, they started to ask us for more places where they can customize the product, and so Hooks were born.

**[Auth0 Hooks](https://auth0.com/docs/hooks)** allow you to customize the behavior of Auth0 using custom code that is executed against several extensibility points. Not only can you introduce customization during the client credentials exchange, but also pre and post user registration. Hooks also take advantage of a more feature rich editor.

![Hooks UI](https://images.ctfassets.net/23aumh6u8s0i/5z6VxLuwFqfKdKRba9vA6W/f63a755d3c63187999e262867c1fdff0/hooks)

While both Auth0 Rules and Hooks give you fine-grained control of the authentication pipeline, **[Auth0 Extensions](https://auth0.com/docs/extensions)** are mini-applications that extend the Auth0 identity product with 3rd party integrations.

They do not directly tie to any specific event in the system. Instead, they can invoke any Auth0 API, can configure the customer tenant, deploy Hooks or Rules on installation and even have an associated user interface. They are extremely powerful and opened up many use cases.

![Extensions UI](https://images.ctfassets.net/23aumh6u8s0i/3z6SONf0xAGkS2UBQavAUL/ce74f139ed89bb283121f9f69abe7482/extensions)

Auth0 Extensions are written using the Webtasks infrastructure. Customers can select an Extension from our gallery and provide a set of configuration options to begin using one.

This is just the beginning. We're constantly looking to enable richer and richer customization in our product, and you'll continue to see us opening new doors as we learn.

## The impact on our sales engineers and customers

![NASA engineers celebrating curiosity](https://images.ctfassets.net/23aumh6u8s0i/5pFHSx1biEJCYLFEKsuh6g/c75c5def4fcb853016d4d68e853ea9e7/celebrating_curiosity)

*Placed into the public domain by [NASA](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Celebrating_Curiosity.jpg) using [Creative Commons](https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)*

Adding extensibility to the identity product opened up a window of customization where field engineers could work independently from core engineering. They could deliver customizations very quickly without waiting weeks or even days, enabling many successful sales engagements.

> **"In some cases, we were able to deliver demos where we implemented feature requests in the demo during the meeting. It was amazing for field engineers and our customers."** 
> Eugenio Pace - Co-Founder, CEO

Putting extensibility into the hands of customers also gives us great insights into where the market is going. If we see an extension being implemented again and again through the use of custom code, that is a validation of that feature and an opportunity to add in the core product.

Multi-Factor Authentication came about this way. MFA was not a switch on the dashboard initially. It was merely a rule you applied to your account. Over time, our customers' usage of this rule indicated MFA was an important feature to have in the core product.

For more examples, take a look at our [rules repository](https://github.com/auth0/rules) on Github. Every single one comes from a real-world customer use case.

> **"Every event in the life cycle of the user can be expressed through code and in that way we can support any backend out there in a flash. No matter how customers encrypt or hash passwords; whatever they do is supported because they can provide the details using custom code."** 
> Sandrino Di Mattia - Engineering Lead

## The impact on our business

![Happy Employees](https://images.ctfassets.net/23aumh6u8s0i/3tb9Pbddo96TUGVZMxu68U/39443eb09615ed15655b82f45bc54862/culture-2)

Not only did we make our customers happier, opening up customization provided us a direct return on revenue. Looking at our data, we found our customer retention increased up to 10x for those users that took advantage of customizing. Not only that, but our largest deals depend on these customizations even today, bringing 70% of our cloud revenue.

## Summary
In the past four years, we've been exploring how to better enable our users to customize and extend our SaaS. On our journey, we discovered the Serverless Extensibility pattern provided a great solution. We found that allowing extensions to be authored in-line provided tremendous value both to our customers and to the business. It allowed us to close more deals and deliver customer features much more quickly and cheaply than before. 

_I would like to thank [Eugenio Pace](https://twitter.com/eugenio_pace), [Sandrino Di Mattia](https://twitter.com/sandrinodm) and [Tomasz Janczuk](https://twitter.com/tjanczuk) for taking time out of their busy schedules to be interviewed for this post._

<include src="asides/AboutAuth0" />

Our Journey toward SaaS Customization and Extensibility at Auth0

How top teams are updating their legacy systems with more secure and efficient solutions.

You used to pay with cash. Then credit cards. Then EMV cards. Now, we’re moving toward things like [cryptocurrency](https://auth0.com/blog/an-introduction-to-ethereum-and-smart-contracts-part-3/) and [biometric authentication](https://auth0.com/blog/tags/biometric-identity/).

Payments and the technology involved in making them are constantly evolving. For example, payment company Square recently added [_Square Register_](https://techcrunch.com/2017/10/30/square-announces-the-register-a-999-point-of-sale-device-for-larger-businesses/) to its hardware lineup. Unlike most of Square’s other equipment, Square Register targets the needs of larger sellers.

![New Square Register hardware that targets larger sellers](https://images.ctfassets.net/23aumh6u8s0i/3cB517ydiTQ1OrJtW1Xcgp/21b12b0ff377b06d77686c542522fb9f/square-register)

At the same time, Mastercard is [_doing away with signatures_](https://newsroom.mastercard.com/press-releases/signing-off-mastercard-moves-beyond-signatures-worldwide/) on the backs of credit cards, and on receipts themselves, in favor of exploring more advanced technologies for identity verification. 

Even PayPal has jumped on the payment revolution by going beyond ecommerce. PayPal now offers customers the option to use their [_PayPal balances_](https://www.tearsheet.co/payments/how-paypal-is-moving-into-physical-retail) at physical retail shops through Android Pay. 

Needless to say, the [_financial services_](https://auth0.com/financial-services) and payments landscape is ever-changing. And a business that wants to remain competitive within its industry needs to look at [updating its legacy system](https://auth0.com/blog/how-do-i-modernize-my-legacy-system/) (or even ripping and replacing it) in order to be more secure, efficient, and compliant with customers’ financial data.

## What’s Inspiring These Changes?

We live in an age of [seemingly constant innovation and advancement](https://www.teampay.co/insights/how-blockchain-will-change-finance/), so it makes sense that payments are following suit.

But there are a few other factors involved in pushing these advancements in payment technology.

One is the uptick of credit card fraud and, as a result, the increasing consumer concern about their security and protection.

![Advancements and the Future of Payments and Payments Processing in 2019](https://images.ctfassets.net/23aumh6u8s0i/2tbJEM41OF7GvxFNduJbpT/1726b2e1900063ee05eb56c52b9a572f/future-of-payment)

Credit card fraud has steadily been on the rise. In fact, the [_financial industry estimates_](https://www.accenture.com/us-en/insight-banking-future-payments-ten-trends) that we’ll reach $31.3 billion in global credit card losses by the end of 2018. Credit card scammers are getting smarter. Today, these fraudsters are capable of not only [_selling credit card numbers_](https://www.businessinsider.com/credit-card-fraud-scam-what-to-do-2018-8) but also identifying information like zip codes. 

Additionally, new [_payment regulations_](https://home.treasury.gov/sites/default/files/2018-07/A-Financial-System-that-Creates-Economic-Opportunities---Nonbank-Financi....pdf) demand an increasing level of transparency and security. To stay compliant, businesses have no choice but to keep up with the changing technology and rules.

## The Future of Payments: 3 Advancements to Be Aware of in 2019

There’s no shortage of changes happening in the payments space. But trying to stay on top of (or even *ahead* of) all of them is a daunting task.

If you're like most companies, you're primarily focused on what you need to know right now. But to remain competitive, you have to stay ahead of the curve. What will payments look like in the future? Here are three burgeoning areas that you should be aware of as you look at updating your own legacy systems.

### 1. Multi-Factor Authentication Will Gain Even More Importance

As concerns over security continue to grow (for good reason), [multi-factor authentication](https://auth0.com/docs/multifactor-authentication) will be of increasing importance for consumers and businesses. 

Traditionally, you could access various accounts by entering a single identifier (think a username or an email address) and a correct password. 

But multi-factor authentication adds another layer to the identity-verification process by asking you to prove your identity in another way — for example, by entering a code you receive on your cell phone or even scanning a fingerprint.

You can think of it as a second security door. Hackers and thieves who are able to make it through the first will have a much tougher time passing through the second.

Because more and more financial and payment data is linked to our personal accounts (your credit card being stored in your Amazon account is just one example), we’ll see multi-factor authentication become the norm more and more. 

Many regions are actually instituting policies to mandate strong customer authentication—like [_PSD2 in Europe_](https://auth0.com/blog/open-auth-standards-psd2/). 

### 2. Point-of-Sale Analytics Will Become Even More Advanced

While the protection of data is an area of primary focus, so is* leveraging* data.

To make more informed predictions about the future, businesses are hungry for any information about what their customers are purchasing. That means we’ll see [_retail analytics_](https://auth0.com/blog/retail-analytics-past-present-and-future/) continue to expand — with an emphasis on point-of-sale analytics. 

Previously, POS analytics were fairly straightforward — they shared what was purchased, and by whom. But today these analytics are capable of reporting on where the item was stored or where it was shipped from and can provide information about inventory and dead stock and even details about the [_customer's identity_](https://auth0.com/blog/digital-success-through-customer-identity-and-access-management/) and their consumption patterns.

As we move into the future, payments are no longer just a one-time transaction with little to no data attached to them. Instead, this important point of contact will become an informative touchpoint for businesses to learn even more about their consumers. 

### 3. User Experience Will Be Paramount

Convenience and ease of use are main areas of focus for today’s customers. They’re no longer writing out checks or counting out stacks of coins—they want the payment process to be as streamlined as possible.

Just look at something like [_ZAPBuy_](https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/omnyway-launches-zapbuy-allowing-shoppers-to-buy-products-from-ads-with-a-snap-300425915.html), which was launched by Omnyway in early 2017. The tool allows users to hold their smartphones over an advertisement on any channel and immediately purchase what’s being promoted to them. 

Consumers have a desire to reduce or eliminate friction in the purchasing process, which is fueling this move toward more [_“invisible” payments_](https://www.tearsheet.co/payments/4-charts-that-show-the-coming-autonomous-payments-wave). Think about Uber as just one of many examples. You don’t think about making a payment when you step foot out of that Toyota Corolla—the transaction happens seamlessly behind the scenes. 

![Uber user interface and simple experience for the future of payments](https://images.ctfassets.net/23aumh6u8s0i/5bRmcm4wRgjkEXsWdYrgJz/24020dd49f3fcabbe8d6c24fcd5b69ab/uber)

When today’s customers see a clunky or cumbersome purchasing process, they immediately head in the other direction. Payments are expected to be fast and easy—and that’s an expectation that will only increase as Generation Z makes up [_40% of consumers_](https://www.accenture.com/t20171012T092426Z__w__/us-en/_acnmedia/PDF-62/Accenture-Driving-the-Future-of-Payments-10-Mega-Trends.pdf#zoom=50) by the year 2020.

## What This Means for You: Updating Legacy Systems in Your Business

Change is here for payments, and it’s going to keep coming.

That means it’s time to start looking at [updating legacy systems](https://auth0.com/blog/how-do-i-modernize-my-legacy-system/) related to payments in your business. While your current systems, tools, and software may work for you right now, they might not have the level of flexibility required to keep up in this ever-evolving industry.

Having the right resources in place will make it much easier to stay on top of—and maybe even ahead of—the constant barrage of changes and advancements in the world of payments. 

Wouldn’t you rather do that than fall behind? We thought so. 

<include src="asides/AboutAuth0" />

"solution"