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Digital identity in helping balance customer experience and enterprise security

In decades past not every business was a digital one. In the modern era, however, if some element of digital is not in every nook and cranny of the business, you’re likely doing something wrong.

This is especially so for organisations that have some sort of customer experience component to their business.

With the recent push in digital transformation necessitating the requirement for more personalised experiences that are not only engaging, useful and breed loyalty, but also technology solutions that are secure and compliant with ever changing regulation.

As such, businesses specialising with customer experience in the digital age need to strike the right balance.

This is often more difficult to implement than many realise, which is why the correct technology partner can alleviate many a security headache that crops up while also delivering valuable insights to drive better customer experience.

Removing friction

This formed the main topic of discussion at two roundtables recently held by Altron Security and Ping Identity, with one happening in Johannesburg and the other in Cape Town.

At the roundtables, the organisations spoke with local C-Suite executives from many industries about their challenges when it comes to this careful balancing act and how identity can play a pivotal role in approaching the challenge from a technology perspective.

Speaking at the roundtable and specifically about trying to address both the need for better customer- and security-focused solutions was Rob Otto, EMEA Field CTO at Ping Identity, who covered the desire to remove as much friction as possible through a smarter application of identity technologies.

“What we are seeing is that identity, while foundational to digital experience, needs to support and enable the digital, not be the digital experience,” explained Otto.

Adding anecdotally, the Field CTO noted that in recent years the identity team would sit separately from the rest of the business developing innovative solutions that were not necessarily great from an experience perspective, all the while failing to see why that needs to be a key consideration.

This is something that needs to change in order to remove friction between the two elements of customer experience and enterprise security.

“We need to get out of the way of business and focus on providing value, and provide that value quickly in a way that is agile to help business achieve its goals,” he emphasised.

Context is key

Looking at how digital identity can play a key role in the aforementioned balancing act locally is Richard Craig, practice lead for Digital Experience at Altron Security, who notes that the South African context is far different than in other countries.

“I think the challenge we are seeing locally is quite different to the one seen in other parts of the globe. We are struggling with a number of tough scenarios including the lights now always staying on, so from an identity and security perspective our big challenge is the fact that large swathes of the population do not have formal means of identity,” he acutely highlighted.

“If you think about the digital economy, if you don’t have a digital identity to link to, there is no digital economy at the end of the day,” he continued.

While there are indeed significant challenges that present themselves locally, Craig does point out that there is also an opportunity that they present, which is part of the reason why Altron Security has chosen to partner with Ping Identity as a solutions provider.

“Some vendors come in and they are only interested in selling you their tech and making their use cases your problem statements. What we realised early on while working with Ping is that it was a partnership,” noted Craig of his experience with Ping Identity.

“It is a partnership where we can go and look at what the customers actually need, as opposed to these are the features my product gives, you simply need to work around it,” he added.

While digital identity is not a silver bullet to the issue of balancing customer experience and enterprise security, leveraging intelligent solutions that are uniquely tailored to the business context can play a pivotal role in addressing said balance.

If you or your business is struggling with the same issues, reach out to Altron Security about Ping Security solutions here.

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