Customer Identity and Access Management (CIAM) evaluation questionnaire

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All 21 vendors in this category.

• baselineRFIWhat authentication methods are natively supported for end-customer login — password, social login, passwordless (magic link, passkeys/WebAuthn), and MFA — and which can be enabled/disabled per application without custom development?weight 3
  Answer key — what a strong answer shows

  Passkey/WebAuthn support and no-code per-app configuration are current maturity signals; a platform requiring custom code for basic MFA toggling is weaker.

• baselineRFPDetail scalability under real consumer-traffic patterns — peak concurrent logins/registrations handled, and a customer reference for a real high-traffic event (e.g., a product launch or holiday-scale spike) without service degradation.weight 3
  Answer key — what a strong answer shows

  A concrete peak-load figure with a named customer event is stronger evidence than a generic "scales to millions of users" marketing claim.

• baselineRFIHow is consent and preference management handled for marketing/data-processing purposes, and does consent state propagate automatically to downstream systems (marketing platforms, data warehouses) when a customer withdraws consent?weight 3
  Answer key — what a strong answer shows

  Automatic downstream consent-withdrawal propagation is materially stronger than a consent record that only lives in the CIAM system with no enforcement elsewhere.

• baselineRFPExplain progressive profiling and account-linking capability — can the platform merge/link a customer's identity across multiple initial touchpoints (guest checkout, social login, email signup) into one unified profile without creating duplicate accounts?weight 3
  Answer key — what a strong answer shows

  Real account-linking/deduplication logic is a meaningful differentiator; probe for how conflicts (e.g., same email, different social provider) are resolved.

• baselineRFIWhat is the customization capability for login/registration UI — fully white-labeled and embeddable in the customer's own branded experience, or does it redirect to a vendor-hosted, harder-to-customize page?weight 3
  Answer key — what a strong answer shows

  Fully embeddable, brand-consistent UI is stronger for consumer-facing use cases where a redirect to an obviously third-party login page hurts trust/conversion.

• baselineRFIHow does the platform support B2B2C or multi-tenant scenarios where the customer's own business customers each need their own branded, isolated identity space?weight 3
  Answer key — what a strong answer shows

  Native multi-tenant isolation with per-tenant branding is a real differentiator over a single flat consumer identity pool with no tenant separation.

• baselineRFPDetail bot/fraud protection at registration and login — credential stuffing detection, fake-account prevention — and quantify the reduction in fraudulent signups or account-takeover attempts with a customer reference.weight 3
  Answer key — what a strong answer shows

  A concrete, customer-referenced fraud-reduction figure is stronger than a generic "advanced bot protection" claim.

• baselineRFIWhat compliance certifications and regional data-residency options are available for consumer PII (GDPR, CCPA, and region-specific requirements), and can data residency be configured per region for a global customer base?weight 3
  Answer key — what a strong answer shows

  Per-region configurable residency is stronger for a genuinely global consumer base than a single fixed data-residency region.

• baselineRFIWhat is the pricing model — per monthly active user (MAU), per authentication event, or a flat tier — and what is the all-in cost trajectory as the consumer user base scales into the millions, given MAU-based pricing can become very expensive at real consumer scale?weight 3
  Answer key — what a strong answer shows

  MAU-based pricing has real, well-known budget implications at consumer scale — ask for a concrete cost projection at realistic growth, not just an introductory-tier price.

• baselineRFPDescribe incident-response support for a confirmed mass credential-stuffing or account-takeover wave against the consumer user base — can the platform rapidly force re-authentication or lock affected accounts at scale, and what is a customer-referenced example of a real incident response?weight 3
  Answer key — what a strong answer shows

  Strong answers describe real mass-incident response capability at consumer scale with a customer example, not just standard per-account security features.

• baselineRFIHow does the platform integrate with the customer's existing marketing/CDP (customer data platform) stack beyond generic 'downstream system' consent propagation — is there a native, maintained integration with named marketing platforms?weight 3
  Answer key — what a strong answer shows

  Ask for specific, named marketing/CDP integrations rather than a generic claim of downstream data propagation — real integration depth varies significantly by platform.

• baselineRFPWhat migration tooling exists for moving from an incumbent CIAM provider — can existing consumer accounts (including password hashes, where portable) be migrated without forcing every user through a disruptive password reset, and what is a customer-referenced migration timeline?weight 3
  Answer key — what a strong answer shows

  Forcing a mass password reset during migration causes real user friction and support burden — ask for a specific hash-migration or progressive-migration capability and a real customer timeline.

• baselineRFIWhat is the business-continuity plan if the CIAM vendor's own infrastructure has an outage — given this locks out the customer's entire consumer user base (not just employees), what is the actual historical uptime record and what compensating access path, if any, exists during an outage?weight 3
  Answer key — what a strong answer shows

  A CIAM outage is uniquely severe since it blocks the customer's entire revenue-facing consumer base, not just internal staff — ask for a real historical uptime track record, not just a contractual SLA number.

• baselineRFIWhat age-verification and parental-consent support exists for platforms with minor users (COPPA-relevant), and is this a native, configurable capability or entirely out of scope requiring custom development?weight 3
  Answer key — what a strong answer shows

  This is a genuine, often-overlooked compliance requirement for consumer-facing platforms with any plausible minor user base — a vendor should give a specific answer rather than assuming this doesn't apply.

• baselineRFPWhat API/developer experience exists for building fully custom identity flows beyond the platform's built-in UI components — how mature are the SDKs, and what is a customer-referenced integration timeline for a highly custom consumer experience?weight 3
  Answer key — what a strong answer shows

  Strong answers point to real SDKs and a customer-validated timeline for custom integration work, not just out-of-the-box UI component customization.

• baselineRFIDetail historical trend reporting on fraud/bot-attack volume and blocked-registration trends over time, suitable for demonstrating program effectiveness to leadership.weight 3
  Answer key — what a strong answer shows

  Trend-over-time reporting is a distinct capability from a real-time fraud dashboard — confirm this exists as a maintained, exportable report.

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