Hypatia Research Group publishes customer identity authentication guide

Hypatia Research Group published a new primary research study entitled “Customer Identity Authentication: A Practitioner’s Guide to Best Practices in Avoiding Identity Theft, Fraud & Risk”.

The 40-page report details best practices in benchmarking, vendor evaluations and an analysis of how, why, and when companies invest in Customer Identity Authentication (CIA) software, what tangible benefits are possible, and which metrics can be used to measure an organization’s return on investment.

The report is intended to provide companies with various insights that will help them compile a vendor short list, request for qualifications, and best practice terms of engagement with software vendors and providers of services.

The report finds that companies use customer identity authentication for two main reasons: First, to improve customer service, such as in the case of financial institutions and call centers which deploy voice biometrics to quickly identify customers. Second, for risk management purposes in an effort reduce cases of fraud.

The report also found that many organizations are now taking a multi-factor and/or multi-modal approach to CIA that goes beyond voice biometrics, which provides a greater level of security and is recommended by many security experts and organizations, such as the FIDO Alliance.

“In short, companies should think about cross-organizational design and encompass numerous issues, from integration of authentication methods to application integration,” said Leslie Ament, SVP of research and principal analyst. “We also strongly recommend that authentication methods should be deployed consistently across channels and modes – customers don’t care that you’ve selected different tools for online e-commerce and contact center usage. Customers engage with brands as one entity, and that’s the face that should be presented to them.”

In preparation for its report, Hypatia Research surveyed more than 626 global practitioners and executives that are directly involved with governance, risk, compliance, security and identity authentication processes and decision-making.

Survey respondents operate mostly in Europe (41.5%) with representation from Asia Pacific (32.4%), and North America (26.1%) regions. Additionally, the organizations were divided among SMBs (8%) with revenues under $100 million, mid-market (34.6%), and large enterprises (57.5%) with $2 billion or more in revenues.

The evaluation was based on vendor briefings, product demonstrations, and customer reference interviews, which were obtained from a third-party professional network.

Article Topics

authentication  |  biometrics  |  Identity  |  identity theft  |  multifactor authentication  |  risk mitigation