Fine-grained Authorization: Protecting and controlling user access in a digital-first world

Strong and flexible customer authentication is a key driver for adopting a customer identity & access management (CIAM) solution, with customer experience and security being the apparent benefits. On the other side of the same coin, authorization is becoming a core capability prompting leaders to adopt more advanced CIAM solutions.

And the reason is this: Fine-grained authorization allows you to enable and scale user collaboration, control or grant access to digital services and applications on a granular level. Let’s unwrap this concept.

But before we dive deeper, we should clear the fog about two interchangeable CIAM terms, authentication and authorization.

Authentication vs. Authorization

Authentication is the foundation of any access request and validates that users are who they claim to be. In some instances, systems require successful verification of multiple factors before granting access. This multi-factor authentication (MFA) requirement often deploys to increase security when accessing critical and sensitive systems and data.

Authorization, on the other hand, is giving the user permission to access a specific resource, service, application or function. In secure environments, authorization must always follow authentication, and customers should prove their genuine identities before being granted access to the requested resources.

In a nutshell:

• Authentication verifies identities
• Authorization grants (or denies) permissions

Simplify and secure access to sensitive data

Now that this mix-up is clarified, let’s look at how CIAM enables seamless authorization in a banking scenario without compromising data security or customer experience.

Authorization manages a complex web of rule-based access policies to grant users access to services and data. Granting these permissions should be a painless, developer-friendly task that, on the other side, translates into frictionless, secure, and uninterrupted customer experiences.

In the past, banks always required tedious identification and unfriendly multi f

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