Early adopter release of Asgardeo lets developers build advanced customer identity and access management into their apps and create frictionless user experiences in minutes
As more consumers demand great digital experiences, enterprises must compete for customer loyalty via online interactions that are both inviting and secure. Customer identity and access management (CIAM) is a critical part of the experience, yet application developers often lack the expertise to incorporate CIAM into their client-facing applications. WSO2 addresses this challenge with today’s introduction of its next-generation identity as a service (IDaaS) solution, Asgardeo.
The early adopter release of Asgardeo, available now, sets a new industry standard for enabling developers without security expertise to easily embed advanced CIAM features into their apps within minutes. The IDaaS provides built-in CIAM best practices and workflows via a range of templates and other no code/low-code options. It also lets developers integrate security code while working within familiar software development environments. In addition, the cloud-native infrastructure of Asgardeo offers the cost-effective scalability, reliability, and agility that organisations creating digital experiences need while providing the privilege access control capabilities so critical to cloud-native computing.
As a result, development teams using Asgardeo can:
- Quickly deliver safe, secure, and robust cloud-native digital applications that give customers confidence their data will be protected.
- Simplify customers’ experiences by letting them use the same log-in credentials no matter what part of the system they are connected to.
- Streamline security reviews and approvals by codifying policies and standards, freeing developers to concentrate on building out their core applications.
- Focus valuable team resources on delivering superior customer experiences instead of managing the underlying infrastructure.
- Protect sensitive APIs and integrations in the cloud.
“Organisations are accelerating their digital initiatives, but they often lose traction when applications fail to meet the company’s security policies. With Asgardeo, enterprises can now encode their security policies and standards to reduce development time and transform security reviews into simple check-the-box exercises,” said Eric Newcomer, WSO2 CTO. “At the same time, using Asgardeo, it’s easier than ever for development teams to foster customer loyalty by giving them a great enrolment experience and building these users confidence in the protection of their personal information.”
“According to our primary research, the ability to orchestrate consumer experiences for accessing online digital services dramatically increases registration and sales conversion rates,” noted Steve Brasen, research director at Enterprise Management Associates. “WSO2’s Asgardeo platform provides organisations with the freedom to easily craft online experiences that will attract and retain customers while simultaneously achieving requirements for security and compliance.”
Bringing Industry-Leading CIAM to the Cloud
Asgardeo builds on the comprehensive CIAM capabilities of WSO2 Identity Server, which has been recognised by some of the world’s leading analyst firms. WSO2 was identified as an overall leader, technology leader, and innovation leader in the KuppingerCole Analysts’ CIAM Platforms Leadership Compass 2020 report published on 20th November 2020. Additionally, WSO2 was named by Forrester Research, Inc. as a Strong Performer in The Forrester Wave™: Customer Identity and Access Management, Q4 2020 report published on 8th October 2020.
Asgardeo inherits rich authentication and access management functionality from WSO2 Identity Server, including the ability to:
- Implement strong authentication via adaptive authentication and a range of multi-factor authentication options to ensure secure access to web and mobile applications.
- Establish federated access to web and mobile applications across multiple trust domains using open identity standards, such as Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML), OpenID Connect, Central Authentication Service (CAS), and WS-Federation.
- Extend federated ID management across multiple software as a service (SaaS) providers’ APIs.
- Bridge identities across multiple heterogeneous systems and protocols, with advanced transformations.
- Manage access to APIs and microservices with comprehensive support for API security standards.
- Protect cloud-native, multi-cloud, and hybrid applications equally.
“As businesses roll out enhanced digital services for their customers, they have been increasingly adopting WSO2 Identity Server to protect and optimise their knowledge of these users while also improving their overall experience,” said Geethika Cooray, WSO2 vice president and head of identity and access management at WSO2. “With Asgardeo, we’re combining the high-performance and mature capabilities of WSO2 Identity Server with the rapid deployment, scalability and agility of the cloud to help developers speed the delivery of client-facing apps harnessing the full potential of CIAM.”
Simplifying the Developer’s CIAM Experience
At the same time, Asgardeo is designed to significantly simplify developers’ experiences when embedding CIAM features into their cloud-native applications. Notably, developers can continue to work in their application development environment when embedding security, managing access, or improving productivity. This is possible because Asgardeo lets developers integrate security code using a software development kit (SDK) and script, as well as debug the login flow from the integrated development environment (IDE).
Asgardeo also empowers developers to orchestrate authentication and authorisation at the application level versus the broader organisation level, enabling them to pick templates for the most common login and access use cases—for example, adding a second authentication step when a customer accesses the application from a new device. Additionally, the IDaaS features enhanced management, registration, and login workflows to provide first-class support for managing the access and identities of customers, employees, and collaborators from a single screen.
Meanwhile, a readily available self-service portal provided by Asgardeo can be shared with end-users, such as customers and employees. The IDaaS also supports theming and branding to support business requirements, from customer-facing user interfaces to self-care portals, email templates, URLs, and more.
Finally, Asgardeo offers several features to simplify account management and enforce account security. Examples include account onboarding options with self-registration, admin-initiated ask password, account enable/disable, account de-registration, account active/inactive status, account recovery, and account security with bot detection, among others.
Pricing and Availability
The early adopter release of Asgardeo by WSO2 is available today. The free entry-level edition contains robust capabilities including single sign-on (SSO), multi-factor authentication (MFA), social login support, adaptive authentication, a user self-care portal, and much more. Additional subscription options are also available. To learn more and try out Asgardeo, visit https://www.wso2.com/asgardeo.
About WSO2
Founded in 2005, WSO2 enables thousands of enterprises, including hundreds of the world’s largest corporations, top universities, and governments, to drive their digital transformation journeys—executing more than 18 trillion transactions and managing more than 500 million identities annually. Using WSO2 for API management, integration, and customer identity and access management (CIAM), these organisations are harnessing the full power of their APIs to securely deliver their digital services and applications. Our open-source, API-first approach to software, that runs on-premises and in the cloud, helps developers and architects to be more productive and rapidly compose digital products to meet demand while remaining free from vendor lock-in. WSO2 has over 900 employees worldwide with offices in Australia, Brazil, Germany, Sri Lanka, the UAE, the UK, and the US. Visit https://wso2.com to learn more.
