Challenges of Customer Identity and Access Management
Balance security and user experience (UX)
Tackling login friction, password fatigue, and account recovery is essential. Passwordless and biometrics can solve but are complex to implement.
Scale and performance
Spikes in traffic can cause login/registration delays and disruptions. Often a poor UX results in customers switching to alternatives.
Data privacy and compliance
Balancing data privacy regulations and high performance is an often-underestimated challenge when building multi-region infrastructure.
Integrations and legacy systems
Modern CIAM implementations are challenged by legacy systems with outdated technologies, dated protocols, and fragmented data, adding expense and time to any project.
Fraud prevention and account takeover
Fraudsters now use sophisticated tools to scale attacks, making legacy security measures obsolete and forcing organizations to constantly evolve their security.
Massive scale without affecting users
Few vendors could keep up with OpenAI/ChatGPT’s meteoric rise. Ory enables their massive growth, 900M weekly active users, and provides a seamless user experience.
Remove friction and improve security
Social logins, passkeys, SSO, passwordless, WebAuthn, adaptive auth enable you to secure users without adding interruptions.
Deployment flexibility - your choice
From Self-hosted to SaaS, Ory provides the same functionality. Start one way and evolve to another, with Ory you have choice and versatility in how you implement.
Own your authentication flows
Ory alternatives force you to build their way with proprietary software. Ory gives you the freedom to build it your way and provides user telemetry to make it better.
Take a headless, API-first approach
By decoupling the UI from the backend, we provide unmatched flexibility, performance, and security, allowing developers to create across any platform.
Global compliance without the hassle
Ory's global database replication keeps user data consistent and unified across all regions, eliminating synchronization issues and providing a single point of administration.
By December when we really started moving traffic on our internal system, we were up around 300 million actives. Now, before we've even completed, we've already added another 100 million. (Now up to 1.2 billion weekly actives as of Sept 2026)
Benjamin Billings
Engineering Manager, Identity Platforms
Deploy it your way
Self-hosted to SaaS: full control over your infrastructure, data, and compliance.
Open Source Deployment — Run and try Ory’s Open Source components with maximum flexibility. Perfect to meet your specific use-cases or proof-of-concept your next big idea. 
Ory Enterprise License
OEL Deployment — Leverage Ory's optimized code base with premium support for mission-critical production environments, on-prem, self-hosted – wherever else you need it, always up to date. 
Ory Network
Ory Network deployment — Enable your instant-on global identity system with speed, security, compliance and support for fastest time to value and lowest total cost of ownership.
Dive deeper into specific topics
Modular and modern IAM & CIAM
Open-source powered, fully customizable Identity and Access Management solutions. Use them all or bolt-on individual solutions to satisfy your critical use cases
OAuth 2.0 and OpenID Certified® OpenID Connect server — Cloud native, security-first, headless API security for your infrastructure. 
Cloud native user management system — Provision IDs, store user information, configure authentication methods and use a headless API. 
SAML to OpenID Connect bridge and Directory Sync — API integration for Enterprise SSO and user lifecycle management based on SAML, OIDC, and SCIM-based protocols. 
Identity and Access Proxy (IAP) — Authenticate, authorize and mutate any incoming traffic, using Zero Trust / BeyondCorp as open source. 
Authorization Server inspired by Google Zanzibar — Consistent, global Authorization System, providing granular access policies with RBAC, ABAC and ACL. 
Secure API Keys — Turn static API keys into short-lived capability tokens for non human identities. Using token derivation and Macaroon tokens, it enforces strict least-privilege guardrails.
Popular CIAM Integrations
Claude Code
Claude Code is an agentic AI coding tool developed by Anthropic that operates directly in your terminal, enabling developers to navigate codebases, build features, debug issues, and automate routine tasks using natural language commands.
Temporal Runtime Target
Temporal is an open-source durable execution platform that keeps long-running workflows reliable through automatic retries, state persistence, and failure recovery.
Anthropic Claude Agent SDK
The Anthropic Claude Agent SDK is a developer framework by Anthropic that enables the programmatic creation and deployment of autonomous AI agents capable of multi-turn reasoning, executing code, and interacting with file systems and external tools.
OpenAI Agents SDK
OpenAI Agents SDK is a lightweight, production-ready framework designed by OpenAI for building, orchestrating, and scaling multi-agent AI workflows with built-in tracing, guardrails, and tool integration.
More on Ory and CIAM
View all CIAM blogs
August 06, 2026
Most authentication proves someone holds the right credential, not which device they're holding it on. Device binding (also called device authentication) closes that gap: a private key generated in a phone's secure hardware, attested by Apple or Google, and used for step-up approval or full passwordless login via PIN or biometrics.
July 02, 2026
Regulations require user data to stay within borders, but most CIAM and B2B platforms can't move it without rebuilding accounts. Ory can.
February 19, 2026
Agentic AI is outpacing security readiness. Passkeys still struggle with UX. Here are the five trends reshaping CIAM in 2026 and how to prepare.
February 03, 2026
A practical solution guide for architects and IAM teams in financial services. Learn how to choose the deployment model that fits today’s constraints while preserving flexibility for scale, customization, and control tomorrow.
