Azure Active Directory B2C

Azure Active Directory B2C is a cloud identity service for application developers. It is designed to handle identity management for app users. This includes sign-up, sign-in, profile management, and password reset among other capabilities. It is one of the most advanced solutions available to secure customer-facing applications. It provides app developers the scalability and availability to connect with millions of users and manage customer, consumer, and citizen access to their applications. The customer identity access management (CIAM) solution supports millions of users and billions of authentications per day to empower customers to use their preferred social, enterprise, or local account identities to acquire single sign-on access to business applications and APIs. Let us look at Azure Active Directory B2C capabilities in detail.

White Label Identity Management Solution

With Azure AD B2C, businesses can customize every pixel of the registration and sign-in experience to blend in seamlessly with their web and mobile application for optimizing the user journey. The HTML, CSS, and JavaScript elements used by Azure AD B2C can be customized to maintain branding consistency at every step from sign-up to the in-app experience. The deep integration with the application results in an experience that makes the use of Azure AD B2C look and feel native to the application.

Security with User Provided Identity

Azure AD B2C can be used to provide single sign-on access using a wide selection of customer provided IDs ranging from social IDs, emails, local accounts, or even business and government IDs from most Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML) and OpenID Connect (OIDC) providers. Its use of standard authentication protocols such as OpenID Connect, OAuth 2.0, and SAML makes it possible to integrate Azure AD B2C with most modern applications and commercial vanilla software. Azure AD B2C acts as the central authentication authority for your web applications, mobile apps, and APIs. This can help in capturing detailed analytics about sign-in behavior and sign-up conversion with a consolidated collection of user profile and preference information.

External User Store Integration

Although Azure AD B2C provides a directory that can hold as many as 100 custom attributes per user, it provides the flexibility of integrating external systems for storing and accessing customer data. This could be an external Customer Relationship Management (CRM) or customer loyalty database that stores the data. Azure AD B2C can be used for authentication alone with its advanced security controls and application- or policy-based multi-factor authentication. Its capabilities can be used to collect the user information and pass it on to the external system which can be eventually retrieved during the authentication process. Such a scenario can arise when there are policies on data residency requirements such as regional or on-premises data storage.

User Journey Optimization

Customer-facing applications are one of the most important touchpoints for businesses attracting new users. A pleasant user journey can go a long way in building trust. Azure AD B2C includes an advanced feature called progressive profiling. This capability accelerates the process of making the first transaction by collecting the bare minimum requirement such as email and phone number and gradually builds on the customer profile data with future sign-ins.

Third-Party Authentication

Although Azure AD B2C has robust identity verification features, some businesses might prefer to integrate third-party systems to perform validation, and trust scoring while creating new user accounts. Azure AD B2C facilitates this process by allowing businesses to embed the services of a third-party provider for identity proofing during the registration process. This enhances the security and compliance requirements for applications that involve the use of confidential data.

Apps4Rent Can Help with Azure AD Deployments

There is a wide range of applications and services under the Azure umbrella and Azure Active Directory B2C is a component of Azure Active Directory, a fairly complex offering in itself. It is not uncommon for businesses to be perplexed by the decisions that they have to make to identify the right Azure solution for their needs. As a Microsoft CSP, Apps4Rent specializes in providing 24/7 assistance via phone, chat, and email to businesses requiring help with Azure deployments including Azure AD B2C and allied cloud solutions. Contact us today for promotional prices on Azure services.