B2B Identity Buyer's Guide: Choose the Right IAM

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Introduction

Modern enterprises increasingly rely upon a growing ecosystem of third-party partners, suppliers, distributors, resellers and enterprise customers. While these third parties play a critical role in driving operational efficiency, innovation, and revenue, they also introduce new challenges. Each entity comes with its own systems, security standards, and user management needs, and failure to manage the complexity of these relationships securely and efficiently can slow down your business and expose it to unnecessary risk.

Business-to-business (B2B) identity and access management (IAM) plays a critical role in extending secure access to external users at scale while maintaining control, compliance, and user experience (UX). Whether you're onboarding a strategic partner, empowering a reseller, or giving access to an enterprise customer, B2B IAM accelerates partner onboarding and enables secure delegated administration, all while ensuring the right people have the right access at the right time.

This guide is designed to help you evaluate B2B IAM solutions through the lens of today's most pressing business and security priorities, enabling you to confidently select a platform that aligns with your goals around growth, trust, and resilience.

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of all breaches involved a third party.¹ — Verizon 2025 Data Breach Investigations Report

Why B2B Identity Needs Its Own Strategy

Traditional IAM systems were built for a different world — focused either on managing employee access to a limited set of internal applications, or on providing individual customers with seamless, personalized experiences. However, B2B relationships don't fit neatly into either category.

B2B ecosystems operate across organizational boundaries, with complex trust relationships, shifting user populations, and a constant demand for fast, secure onboarding. All of which has to be balanced with delivering consumer-like experiences that today's users demand.

Legacy solutions struggle to meet the nuanced needs of modern B2B identity scenarios. They often rely on manual processes, lack the scalability to support diverse partner structures, and cannot accommodate federated or delegated access models. As a result, many organizations face growing administrative overhead, poor UX, and increased exposure to third-party risk.

Comprehensive B2B IAM solutions are designed to address these challenges, combining the scale and user experience of CIAM with the governance and policy controls of workforce IAM, while introducing the delegation, hierarchy, and relationship modeling capabilities required to manage complex and dynamic third-party relationships with confidence.

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B2B IAM is complex due to multiple stakeholders, requiring a tailored and strategic approach. Traditional IAM solutions may fall short, as they are either CIAM-focused or workforce-centric. If done correctly, B2B IAM can be a game-changer.²

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Paul Fisher

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Analyst

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KuppingerCole Analysts

Laying the Foundation for B2B IAM Success

Starting your B2B IAM journey begins with identifying the external relationships that matter most — business customers, partners, suppliers, resellers — and understanding their different capabilities, systems, and access needs. Are you looking to streamline onboarding? Reduce third-party risk? Improve partner experience and productivity? Likely, it's a combination, or maybe even all of them.

Once your priorities are clear, the next step is to assess your current B2B IAM infrastructure. Can your existing systems support federated access, delegated administration, and complex partner hierarchies? Does it offer the flexibility to scale with business growth and evolving relationships, or does it create friction? Identifying where your existing approach falls short will help guide your B2B IAM strategy.

The goal is to align identity with business outcomes, enabling secure collaboration, accelerating time-to-value, and reducing operational overhead. A strong B2B IAM foundation helps you build trusted relationships, reduce risk, and support growth across your entire ecosystem.

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of organizations indicate that third-party risk is either a high or critical priority for their business.³ — CyberRisk Alliance

Getting Started with the Basics

First, start with some high-level questions to streamline the list of vendors to which you’ll apply the more elaborate evaluation criteria in the next section. Consider these higher-level questions to get started.

Question

Why It Matters

How long has the vendor been in business?

Experience in the market can indicate stability and sustained success.

Is the vendor a recognized leader within the industry?

Third-party recognition of leadership often reflects innovation, reliability, and a strong user base.

Has the vendor demonstrated expertise in solving complex identity problems without large, post-sale surprise costs?

While most vendors can solve basic use cases, their costs compound exponentially for customizations required by most large projects.

Can the vendor provide user success stories and testimonials that relate to the problems you're trying to solve?

Real-world success stories provide insights into how the solution has performed for other organizations.

Has the vendor applied sufficient rigor in securing user deployments?

A strong security posture is a critical requirement for ensuring user data and mission-critical infrastructure are insulated from attack.

Has the vendor delivered performance and resiliency at a sufficient scale?

Delivering at scale is critical to being competitive and expanding within both internal and third-party ecosystems.

Does the solution allow you to easily design A/B tests to optimize the user journey?

A/B testing is critical to improving conversion rates and retention by optimizing user experiences.

Does the vendor have a track record of innovation to meet evolving industry and user demands?

Continuous improvement ensures that the solution stays ahead of industry trends and evolving requirements.

Does the vendor offer robust training, support and an active user community?

Strong support and training resources are essential for successful implementation and ongoing use of the solution.

Does the vendor have a strong implementation partner network?

Skilled IAM practitioners can be hard to find. Having skilled partners ready and able to make your implementation successful is critical.

Evaluation Deep Dive

As you evaluate potential B2B IAM solutions, it's essential to match vendor capabilities to your organization's specific goals. To support that process, this guide outlines key B2B IAM capabilities, explains why each one matters, and organizes them around common business drivers.

The evaluation areas are structured to reflect the needs of modern B2B ecosystems, connecting identity capabilities to outcomes like trust, efficiency, scalability, and growth. This lens will help you focus on the features and capabilities that drive the greatest value across your third-party ecosystem and your broader organization.

The Comprehensive Criteria

We’ve divided specific capabilities you should evaluate when choosing a B2B IAM provider into subsections based on the following categories:

Partner Onboarding & Trust Relationships
Organizational Complexity & Efficiency
Third-Party User Access & Lifecycle Management
Revenue, Loyalty, & Productivity
Security & Third-Party Risk

Turn IAM Challenges into Business Opportunities:

Talk to an expert to learn how modern identity strategies drive efficiency and trust across your B2B ecosystem.

Partner Onboarding & Trust Relationships

The criteria in this section focuses on onboarding new business partners and the key factors that can determine whether a trusted relationship is established quickly and securely, or delayed by manual processes, uncertainty, and friction that erode confidence before collaboration even begins.

B2B IAM Capability

Evaluation Criteria

Why It Matters

Business Entity Onboarding & Lifecycle Management

Does the IAM platform offer a dedicated capability for onboarding and managing third-party business entities?

Enables organizations to manage the relationships with business entities, including onboarding, updates, and offboarding.

Federated Single Sign-On (SSO)

Does the vendor offer federated SSO for third-party organizations and business ecosystems based on open standards such as OIDC/OAuth and SAML, as well as Microsoft proprietary federation technology (WS-Fed/WS-Trust)?

Federated SSO allows external users — like partners, suppliers, and contractors — to access your applications using credentials managed by their own organization. By establishing trust between identity providers and exchanging authentication tokens via open standards, federated SSO eliminates the need to manage third-party credentials directly. This reduces security risk, simplifies partner onboarding, and supports secure, scalable collaboration across organizational boundaries.

Verified Onboarding

Does the solution support flexible, verified onboarding for third-party users and organizations, including the ability to separate identity proofing and validation workflows to introduce friction at the right time?

Verified onboarding follows the "trust but verify" approach to help deliver strong identity assurance at the time of onboarding. By incorporating rigorous identity proofing and continuous validation throughout the process, organizations can ensure external users and their organizations are legitimate and authorized before access is granted. This reduces the risk of fraud, account misuse, and unauthorized access, particularly in high-trust or regulated environments.

API-First Model

Does the IAM platform provide an API-first architecture for seamless third-party identity integration?

An IAM solution that provides an API-first architecture makes it easy for partner applications, supply chain portals, and systems to integrate seamlessly.

Accelerated Application Integration

Does the IAM solution offer an extensive integration ecosystem for third-party systems and services that's vendor agnostic?

In B2B environments, seamless integration is critical, but often outside the host organization's control. Because each partner may rely on different systems, identity platforms must offer broad integration capabilities that adapt to the partner's infrastructure, not the other way around. This flexibility streamlines onboarding and ensures reliable connectivity across a wide range of business systems.

Software Development Kits (SDKs)

Does the platform provide SDKs for rapid integration with mobile and web applications?

An SDK is a toolkit that consists of prebuilt software components, tools, and documentation that enable developers to build applications for a specific platform more quickly and effectively. SDKs help speed time-to-market by eliminating the need for developers to build code for specific capabilities themselves. They also help standardize the development of applications.

Organizational Complexity & Efficiency

B2B IAM systems must account for the unique complexities of managing access across diverse organizational structures. The capabilities below address how a solution can scale efficiently while maintaining clarity, consistency, and control.

B2B IAM Capability

Evaluation Criteria

Why It Matters

Managed, Federated, and BYOIdP

Does the IAM platform support managed identities, federated identity providers (IdPs), and Bring Your Own Identity Provider (BYOIdP) to enable flexible user authentication across internal, partner, and third-party ecosystems?

Supporting managed identities, federated IdPs, and BYOIdP is essential in B2B environments where users come from a wide range of organizations with their own identity systems. This flexibility allows partners, contractors, and customers to authenticate using their existing credentials, reducing friction, improving UX, and strengthening security by avoiding redundant identity stores. It also enables faster onboarding and more scalable identity management across diverse third-party ecosystems.

No-Code Identity Orchestration

Does the IAM platform offer no-code identity orchestration capabilities?

No-code and low-code orchestration empowers organizations to streamline and automate complex identity workflows without the need for custom development, enabling faster deployment, reduced operational overhead, and consistent UX. In B2B scenarios, it's especially valuable for accommodating the varying technical capabilities of partner organizations, from highly mature enterprises to those with limited identity expertise.

Model Complex Hierarchies

Does the IAM platform allow modeling of complex organizational hierarchies?

A supplier should be able to manage regional subcontractors with delegated access and tailored controls without needing to alter its organizational model to fit the platform. Modeling complex organizational hierarchies allows you to align access policies, delegation, governance, and UX with your actual business structure — whether you're managing multiple partners, divisions, regions, or tiers. This not only simplifies configuration and administration, but also ensures each user sees the right experience for their role and relationship. It allows the IAM platform to adapt to your organization, not the other way around.

Model Complex Relationships

Does the IAM platform allow modeling of complex relationships between organizations and users?

Modeling complex relationships between organizations and users is critical in B2B ecosystems, where users often span multiple roles across subcontractors, partners, and vendors. These real-world relationships rarely fit into rigid identity structures, so an effective IAM platform must adapt to how the business operates, not the other way around. By supporting flexible relationship modeling, the platform can enable secure, scalable delegation and dynamic access control aligned with actual business interactions. For example, a contractor working with two partner organizations should have a single identity with access that reflects each relationship, while a supplier managing multiple subcontractors should be able to mirror those connections in the platform without duplicating roles or compromising security.

Configuration Inheritance

Does the IAM platform allow configuration inheritance across different partner tiers?

Apply consistent access policies across different partner tiers to maintain security and governance.

Bulk User Onboarding for B2B Users/Identities

Does the IAM solution provide bulk onboarding capabilities for B2B users?

Onboarding in B2B scenarios often involves entire teams or partner organizations, not just individual users. Bulk onboarding capabilities streamline the process, reduce manual effort, and help ensure consistent access provisioning at scale. This enables efficient onboarding of large numbers of B2B users, and accelerates time-to-value for new partners while minimizing the risk of errors and delays that can impact productivity and trust.

Deployment Flexibility

Does the vendor support flexible deployment options, including cloud, on-premises, and hybrid?

You should be able to choose how to deploy B2B Identity to meet your specific business needs. A B2B IAM vendor should be able to provide you with deployment options, including the simplicity of a multi-tenant SaaS solution, the configurability of a single-tenant managed solution, or the customizability of an on-premises solution.

Deployment Flexibility

Does the vendor support containerization and orchestration for DevOps?

Some organizations want to maintain full control over their identity solution by managing identity in an environment they fully control, whether that's a private cloud or self-managed. If either of these apply, be sure your vendor can support your preferred option.

Deployment Flexibility

Can the solution be deployed within any cloud environment, including multi-cloud, bring-your-own-cloud, or hybrid cloud?

B2B IAM platforms should include flexible consumption options that include multi-cloud and hybrid-cloud deployments. Multi-cloud environments have become popular due to their increased flexibility, availability, and scalability. These environments allow organizations to eliminate vendor lock-in and speed time-to-market while reducing complexity and saving time and money. Hybrid environments include both on-premise and cloud environments. Cloud environments support needs at scale, or choose on-premises environments to store sensitive data to meet data residency or other compliance requirements.

Migration

Does the vendor support co-existing with legacy systems to enable a phased migration to a modern B2B IAM solution?

For most organizations, it usually isn't feasible to take a rip-and-replace approach when moving from a legacy system to a modern B2B IAM solution. When your vendor can support a phased migration approach by allowing the legacy and modern systems to co-exist, you'll greatly minimize the potential for downtime and other risks.

Open Standards

Does the vendor support a full range of open identity standards — from foundational protocols like OAuth 2.0, OpenID Connect, and SAML to modern, advanced specifications, such as UMA 2.0, OAuth 2.0 Proof-of-Possession, Device Flow, CIBA, FIDO2, and WebAuthn?

Open standards are the foundation of secure, interoperable identity systems. Core protocols like OAuth 2.0, OpenID Connect (OIDC), and SAML enable seamless SSO, delegated authorization, and secure identity federation across platforms. However, today's leading identity platforms go further, adopting advanced and emerging standards to support a broader range of use cases, devices, and security requirements.

For example: UMA 2.0 allows users to control and delegate access to their data. OAuth 2.0 Proof-of-Possession strengthens API security by ensuring the token holder is the legitimate client. Device Flow supports login for smart devices with limited input (like TVs and kiosks). CIBA (Client-Initiated Backchannel Authentication) enables secure, app-based user verification on a separate device. FIDO2 and WebAuthn bring phishing-resistant, passwordless authentication to modern apps.

Choosing a vendor with strong support for both established and emerging standards ensures long-term flexibility, security, and future-readiness as your identity needs evolve.

Scale and Performance

Can the IAM platform elastically scale identity services, such as registration, authentication, authorization, and sync, to handle the volume, complexity, and unpredictability of B2B and third-party relationships?

B2B ecosystems can involve millions of identities across global partners, suppliers, and business customers. A scalable IAM platform must elastically respond to unpredictable demand, including product launches, regulatory changes, partner onboarding surges, or high traffic events, without slowing down. This ensures fast, reliable access that drives business agility and sustained growth.

Legacy Application Support

Does the platform have the ability to connect and extend to legacy systems and applications through an identity gateway?

The ability to connect and extend to legacy systems and applications is an important feature of IAM platforms. This is done through an identity gateway, which allows both legacy and contemporary systems and applications to fluidly and securely communicate with each other. Legacy application support allows organizations to extend their current investments, resulting in increased ROI and reduced costs without having to perform a huge rip-and-replace project.

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We are creating a delegated account management model which will greatly reduce the management burden for providers. We are streamlining the process significantly, which will improve efficiency and reduce administrative burden.⁴

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Tracy Styles

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IT Support Services Manager

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Partners Health Management

B2B IAM Capability

Evaluation Criteria

Why It Matters

Platform Resiliency

Does the IAM platform support flexible deployment models (cloud-native, hybrid, on-prem) without compromising high availability or disaster recovery features?

Enterprises operate across diverse IT environments and must maintain continuous identity services despite regional disruptions or deployment choices. A resilient B2B IAM platform ensures flexible deployment across cloud-native, hybrid, and on-premises models while delivering high availability and disaster recovery. This enables rapid recovery with minimal data loss, seamless failover, and uninterrupted access — critical for global organizations requiring 24/7 uptime, SLA adherence, and regulatory compliance.

Low RPO (Recovery Point Objective) and RTO (Recovery Time Objective) targets, active/active configurations, hot standby tenants, and cross-regional failover are essential capabilities to protect business continuity.

Availability and Session Resilience

Does the solution support high availability and session resilience, including automatic failover and preservation of active user sessions if a server or service node goes down?

In B2B environments, IAM downtime can bring operations to a halt. It's essential that your IAM provider supports both service availability (so users can still log in) and session availability (so users remain connected during outages). These capabilities protect revenue, prevent disruptions to critical partner services, and reduce support burden.

Technical Partner Ecosystem

Does the provider have a strong ecosystem of respected consultancy, technology, and integration partners?

The strongest B2B IAM solutions are those that work well with a wide variety of other technologies, software, and industry leaders to solve the unique goals of each organization. As such, B2B IAM providers must have a strong ecosystem of respected consultancy, technology, and integration partners. This ecosystem should include pre-built, tested, and always updated integrations ready to be easily utilized.

Third-Party User Access & Lifecycle Management

Managing the full lifecycle of third-party users — from onboarding to deactivation — is essential to maintaining both security and operational efficiency. These users often enter and exit in waves, change roles frequently, or support multiple functions within the ecosystem. When evaluating a B2B IAM solution, it’s important to consider how well it supports automated provisioning, delegated administration, access reviews, and timely offboarding — all without introducing friction or administrative burden. While some of these criteria operate behind the scenes, their impact is felt every day.

B2B IAM Capability

Evaluation Criteria

Why It Matters

Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA)

Does the IAM solution support adaptive MFA for partners and third-party users?

MFA enhances security by ensuring external users authenticate securely without disrupting their experience. MFA helps organizations know who is interacting with them, what they're enabled to do, and trust that the interaction is secure. This results in improved security and compliance.

Adaptable Security Policies

Does the platform support adaptive authentication and security policies that adjust based on contextual risk?

Adaptable policies enhance security and UX by responding to real-time context without interrupting legitimate access.

Context-Aware Access

Does the platform support context-aware access decisions based on real-time context like location, device, or time?

Context-aware access ensures the right level of access at the right time, improving control over how and when partners interact with your systems.

Granular, Scoped, Delegated Administration

Does the system enable granular delegated administration of users and configuration for partner organizations?

Delegated administration allows for decentralized administration of user access and empowers trusted partners with controlled self-service capabilities to create, manage, and delegate the management of accounts and access for their own users within well-established guardrails, reducing administrative overhead and enhancing responsiveness. Consider the level of granularity available for delegated administration when evaluating vendors.

Lifecycle Management & Automated Provisioning

Does the IAM solution support real-time user provisioning, updates, and deactivation for B2B identities?

Eliminates manual intervention by ensuring role changes and terminations for partner and business customer employees are synchronized automatically.

Governed Administration

Does the IAM platform offer fully governed administration capabilities, i.e., a full audit log of all administrative activities within the platform?

In B2B environments, where multiple administrators may manage access across complex partner ecosystems, fully governed administration is critical. A complete audit log of all administrative activities ensures transparency, supports compliance, and enables rapid investigation of changes or misconfigurations.

IGA Across the Entire B2B Ecosystem

Does the IAM platform offer identity governance and administration (IGA) capabilities across the entire B2B ecosystem?

Ensures all users have the appropriate access and it's properly managed. Identify solutions that offer third-party access review and request capabilities with delegation features and per-organization flexibility in glossary and access catalog scoping.

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of organizations have a relationship with at least one third party that has experienced a breach in the last two years.⁵ — Cyentia Institute and SecurityScorecard

B2B IAM Capability

Evaluation Criteria

Why It Matters

Multi-Channel Registration Support

Does the IAM solution support multi-channel registration for B2B customers?

Provides flexibility for B2B customers to register through various channels and consider all the different channels that your various B2B users may use to register.

Customizable B2B User Registration

Does the IAM solution support customizable registration workflows for B2B users, including options for MFA setup, Terms of Service agreements, progressive profiling, and registration via external IdPs or social identity providers?

In B2B environments, registration isn't one-size-fits-all. Customizable workflows let you tailor the registration experience to match your business requirements and partner expectations — whether that means requiring MFA setup, presenting Terms of Service, enabling progressive profiling, or supporting external identity providers. This flexibility ensures a secure, compliant, and user-friendly onboarding process across a diverse range of third-party users.

Orchestration

How does the vendor pre-identify a user's digital signal, such as location, IP address, device type, operating system, browser type, and more, before a username is even collected?

No-code/low-code identity orchestration gives administrators the ability to build authentication workflows that easily configure, measure, and adjust user login journeys using a wide array of contextual signals. Administrators can also quickly consume out-of-the-box authenticators, utilize existing authenticators, and integrate with cybersecurity solutions.

Revenue, Loyalty & Productivity

The following criteria focus on how a B2B IAM solution can enhance partner and business customer experiences to improve productivity, strengthen loyalty, and drive long-term revenue growth through streamlined access, personalized interactions, and seamless self-service capabilities.

B2B IAM Capability

Evaluation Criteria

Why It Matters

Brandable UI for Delegated Administration

Does the IAM platform allow for a customizable, bespoke, and brandable experience for both end users and delegated administrators?

UX directly affects trust and adoption. Offering a customizable, brandable interface for both end users and delegated administrators helps partners feel like they're engaging with your organization — not a generic platform. Tailoring the experience also ensures usability across diverse roles, streamlines identity tasks like access requests or approvals, and reinforces your brand across the B2B ecosystem.

Customized Experiences Per Partner Organization

Does the IAM platform allow tailoring of UX and access flows for each partner organization?

Customized experiences for each partner boost satisfaction, productivity, loyalty, and engagement by meeting unique partner expectations.

Enterprise-Wide SSO

Does the IAM platform offer enterprise-wide SSO for internal and external users?

SSO is a user authentication service that allows users access to multiple apps, services, and systems with one set of login credentials. SSO helps provide a seamless and secure user experience for all users, resulting in increased productivity, stronger business growth, and a competitive advantage.

Standards used for SSO include SAML, OpenID, and OIDC.

Simplified Registration & Login

Does the solution offer quick registration and login using federated or social credentials?

Streamlined login experiences reduce friction for partners and business customers and improve adoption of your systems.

Progressive Profiling

Can the system collect partner data incrementally to minimize onboarding friction?

Rather than asking your users to fill out extensive registration forms, you can implement progressive profiling — this technique gathers information over time as your users interact with your systems, reducing barriers to entry while still capturing needed identity data.

Verified Self-Service

Does the solution support secure, identity-verified self-service for account recovery or access changes?

In B2B environments, verified self-service ensures only authenticated and trusted third-party users can perform sensitive account actions — like updating contact details, resetting passwords, or requesting access. By combining identity verification with self-service, organizations maintain security and compliance while reducing support overhead. This empowers external users, accelerates resolution times, and enforces policy-driven guardrails through continuous verification.

Orchestration

Does the solution allow access journeys to be easily created, viewed, and changed with no-code/low-code, drag-and-drop user interfaces?

This capability means users can receive highly tailored and personalized user experiences across partners, channels, and brands.

Single View of Identity

Does the vendor enable integration with third-party systems to consolidate identity data silos to create a single view of the user organization-wide?

In B2B ecosystems, third-party identities often span multiple disconnected systems, making it hard to manage access, assess risk, and deliver a consistent experience. A single view of identity consolidates data from across your environment to give you full visibility into each user's roles, relationships, and entitlements. This improves access decisions, streamlines administration, and strengthens security through centralized oversight, while enabling seamless UX.

Journey-Time Orchestration (JTO)

Can the platform dynamically adapt access based on user context, ensuring seamless and personalized authentication experiences?

Balance security and UX by adapting authentication in real time, reducing friction while preventing fraud and unauthorized access, and addressing the problem of MFA fatigue.

Passwordless Authentication

Does the vendor support passwordless options for users, such as the FIDO standard?

Passwords remain a top target for attackers, and a common source of friction for users. Supporting passwordless authentication, especially with standards like FIDO, enhances both security and usability. In B2B environments, it simplifies access for partners and third-party users while reducing the risk of credential-based attacks and the overhead of password management.

Security & Third-Party Risk

Fraudulent activities often begin with attacks on B2B identity and the supporting systems. Things like account takeover (ATO), new account fraud (NAF), synthetic identities, deepfakes, and the malicious bots that often help perpetrate fraud, can typically be detected and prevented by identity systems, provided they have modern security features. The following criteria can help you evaluate fraud prevention and security solutions by looking at risk detection, decisioning, and mitigation capabilities, as well as their UX impacts.

B2B IAM Capability

Evaluation Criteria

Why It Matters

Local Third-Party Identity Verification (IDV) Providers

Does the IAM platform support integration with local third-party identity verification (IDV) providers that can validate region-specific credentials and identity documents?

Local third-party IDV is essential for organizations operating across regions with varying regulatory, privacy, and trust requirements. Integrating with local IDV providers allows for the verification of region-specific credentials, such as national ID cards or local banking records, ensuring compliance with local laws and data residency standards. It also builds trust by using familiar, regionally-recognized verification methods, which improves user adoption and supports secure, scalable onboarding of third parties like partners, contractors, and suppliers.

Dynamic Role-Based Access Control (RBAC)

Does the IAM platform support dynamic RBAC?

Ensures users have the appropriate access based on their current role. Dynamic RBAC should be able to adapt to changes in user roles and responsibilities.

Fine-Grained, Policy-Based Access Management (PBAM)

Does the vendor support fine-grained, dynamic authorization through Policy-Based Access Management (PBAM) that leverages real-time context, user attributes, and business rules?

Fine-grained PBAM is critical to third-party access, because these users often require highly specific, limited permissions based on their role, organization, or relationship. PBAM enables dynamic authorization by evaluating real-time context, such as user attributes, device, location, and risk level, to enforce least-privilege access. This ensures external users can access only what they need for their legitimate business purpose, reducing the risk of over-permissioning, data leakage, and compliance violations.

Identity Verification

Does the IAM platform support identity verification for third-party users using multiple methods?

In B2B environments, knowing a partner or contractor is truly who they claim to be is essential to building trust and preventing fraud. A strong identity verification process, especially during onboarding, helps ensure only legitimate users are granted access to sensitive systems. Multi-method support — like government ID checks, biometrics, or third-party services — gives you the flexibility to apply the right level of assurance based on risk, region, or regulatory need. This is especially critical during onboarding and when granting access to sensitive resources.

AI and ML-Driven Threat Detection

Does the IAM platform offer threat detection that leverages artificial intelligence (AI) or machine learning (ML)?

B2B ecosystems introduce complex and often unpredictable access patterns. In addition, due to the unknown nature of third parties, AI- and ML-powered threat detection helps identify anomalies — such as unusual login behavior or access from compromised accounts — that traditional rules might miss. This proactive approach helps prevent account takeover (ATO) and fraud before damage occurs, particularly in environments with diverse third-party users.

Decentralized Identities / Digital Wallets

Does the solution support W3C DID and Verifiable Credentials, including credential issuance, storage, and verification?

Decentralized identity gives users control over their credentials while reducing reliance on centralized systems. In B2B ecosystems, this enhances privacy, limits data exposure, and increases trust between parties. Support for digital wallets, secure credential issuance, verification, revocation, and interoperability with third-party identity providers and industry credentials enables secure, standards-based interactions across B2B ecosystems, improving onboarding, trust, and compliance.

Fraud Detection

Does the vendor provide online fraud detection?

Ask your vendor if they can detect identity fraud threats in real time, identifying attempts at ATO, session hijacking, new account fraud (NAF), synthetic identity fraud, automated attacks, and more. Ensure your IAM platform is capable of detecting all the threats that could impact your business.

Fraud Detection — ATO

Does the solution detect account takeover?

ATO occurs when a bad actor gains unauthorized access to a user's digital identity account, and is often the source of data breaches, theft, and other fraudulent activities that lead to lost revenue, damaged brand reputation, and significant mitigation costs.

Fraud Detection — NAF

Does the solution detect new account fraud?

NAF occurs when a bad actor creates an account with malicious intent. These new accounts may be used to execute fraudulent transactions, test stolen payment information, and other fraudulent activities that lead to lost revenue, brand reputation damage, and significant mitigation costs.

Fraud Detection — Malicious Bots

Does the solution detect malicious bots and other automated attacks?

47% of internet traffic today is bots, and they can be used to perpetrate fraud at scale. To stop things like password spraying, brute force attacks, sniping, fraudulent new account creation, card testing, and more, you need a solution that can accurately distinguish between human and non-human users.

Fraud Prevention — Synthetic Identity & Deepfakes

Does the solution protect against synthetic and stolen identity fraud and deepfakes?

Organizations are increasingly dealing with cases of synthetic and stolen identities being used to commit fraud, made worse by advancements in AI and deepfake technology. Your organization needs an AI-enabled solution that can accurately identify users and stop these identity crimes in an era where human eyes and ears can no longer accurately distinguish what is real in the digital sphere.

Fraud Prevention — Composite Risk Scoring

Does the solution pull together fraud and risk signals from multiple sources and tools, and provide composite risk scoring?

The average organization has 5–8 sources of risk signals and data that can be used to evaluate the riskiness of a user or session, but these tools rarely talk to each other. You need a solution that can bring all of these sources (as many as 13) of context into a single real-time decision, delivering a composite risk score based on your organization's unique requirements, so that you can respond appropriately to the level and type of threat.

Fraud Prevention — Authentication

Does the vendor support risk-based authentication policies?

No matter how convenient you make MFA, it still adds friction. Intelligent policies that take real-time risk into account allow you to adjust authentication requirements up or down based on hard data, introducing friction only when the request warrants it and letting safe users stay logged in longer.

Fraud Prevention — User Journey

Does the solution monitor and protect the entire user journey, invoking additional security measures at any point in the user session when risk is high?

Most identity solutions only protect at the initial authentication. However, this approach means the context collected throughout the rest of the user journey is not taken into account when evaluating risk. Organizations need fraud prevention solutions that measure risk continuously, so it's possible to stop cyber criminals beyond authentication. This capability ensures you have multiple opportunities to identify and stop bad users, and have the maximum amount of context to make accurate decisions.

Fraud Mitigation

Does the vendor support a variety of fraud mitigation methods to be deployed based on the level and type of risk?

Many fraud tools stop at detection. You need an IAM solution that can evaluate threat signals in real time, make informed decisions, and trigger the appropriate mitigation. Effective fraud response requires flexible options, ranging from step-up authentication and identity verification to dynamic workflows that adapt based on threat level and type.

Authorization

Does the vendor support fine-grained dynamic authorization?

Fine-grained authorization enables the principle of "least privileged access." This means only granting access essential to perform an intended purpose. Users are only permitted to access the exact information and resources necessary for a particular function or project. Additionally, fine-grained policy controls allow you to build a decisioning framework that enables a real-time response to perceived threats.

Data Protection

Does the vendor encrypt data at every state and implement other data layer security best practices?

To ensure that your user data is protected at all times, it must be encrypted in every state — at rest, in memory and in motion.

API Protection

Can the vendor provide access control to applications and APIs?

Behind every app are APIs that can be exploited to cause a breach. You need a B2B IAM solution that can ensure your APIs remain protected from bad actors.

Next-Generation Authentication & Authorization

Does the platform support next-generation authentication and authorization methods?

Modern B2B ecosystems demand secure, seamless experiences for external users like partners and contractors. Next-gen methods — such as passwordless authentication, passkeys, adaptive MFA, and policy-based authorization — improve security while reducing friction. These capabilities help build trust, speed up partner access, and reduce support overhead across complex identity ecosystems.

Zero Trust Access Controls

Does the platform support least-privilege, continuously verified access?

Zero Trust ensures no access is granted by default, minimizing the risk of credential abuse and insider threats. Zero Trust is about the right person accessing the right resource under the right conditions, leveraging identity verification in high-risk transactions.

Closed-Loop Remediation

Can the system automatically mitigate threats by revoking access or escalating suspicious activity?

Automated remediation ensures rapid response to emerging risks, helping prevent security incidents in real time.

Journey-Time Orchestration (JTO)

Can the platform dynamically adapt access based on user context, ensuring trusted and seamless authentication?

JTO balances security and UX by adapting authentication in real time, reducing friction while preventing fraud and unauthorized access.

Data Sovereignty

How does the vendor solution deliver granular data sovereignty?

Data sovereignty is a critical consideration for enterprises operating across multiple jurisdictions. A comprehensive B2B IAM SaaS platform should provide granular control over where identity data is stored, processed, and managed to meet regional regulatory requirements. This includes the ability to align with data residency laws, ensure compliance with local privacy standards, and maintain clear boundaries between regional workloads.

Data Residency

Does the vendor offer flexible data residency?

Data residency and data sovereignty are crucial concepts that govern where user data is stored and the legal authority that applies to it, regardless of location. Data residency typically requires a user's data be collected, stored, and processed within their country's borders. To comply with regulations like GDPR, B2B IAM providers should offer flexible data residency options, enabling privacy-bound data storage and fractional replication of personal data across data centers in multiple jurisdictions. This ensures user data can be processed in a way that is sensitive to the legal and regulatory requirements of specific regions.

Privacy

Can the vendor collect and store auditable consent records?

When gathering customer consent, you must collect data in an auditable way. Your B2B IAM vendor should be able to store the time the data was collected, evidence of collection (such as an IP address), and other information needed for privacy audits. This capability is essential for B2B business customer use cases.

Privacy

Does the vendor support a privacy and consent framework based on the UMA 2.0 standard?

Privacy regulations like GDPR require users to maintain control over their data. To ensure compliance, B2B IAM platforms should follow Privacy by Design principles and support consent frameworks like UMA 2.0. This includes intuitive tools that give users fine-grained control to manage and audit data tied to themselves, their devices, and their digital interactions.

Privacy

Does the vendor support fine-grained dynamic authorization to meet privacy regulations?

Privacy regulations are diverse and can vary by organization, industry, geography, and more. B2B IAM solutions should contain centrally managed privacy policies that let you enforce user consent and govern data sharing on an attribute-by-attribute level for every application.

IAM Auditing

Does the vendor enable auditing for system security, troubleshooting, usage analytics, and regulatory compliance?

System auditing and analytics capabilities are mission-critical functions. B2B IAM platforms must be able to conduct audits for system security, troubleshooting, usage analytics, and regulatory compliance. Audit logs should gather operational information about events occurring within a deployment to track processes and security data, including authentication mechanisms, system access, user and administrator activity, error messages, and configuration changes.

KYC, AML, & Open Banking

Does the vendor support the identity, authentication, consent, and fine-grained authorization requirements mandated by PSD2, Open Banking, and KYC/AML?

PSD2 (and soon-to-be PSR1/PSD3), privacy, and Open Banking requirements continue to evolve rapidly across most parts of the world. To enable organizations to meet regulatory requirements and maximize ROI on Open Banking and Open Finance investments requires modern IAM, including comprehensive fine-grained authorization capabilities.

FAPI Conformance

Does the vendor conform with the OpenID Foundation Financial Grade API (FAPI) 2.0 certification?

Financial services organizations looking to advance their Open Banking offerings need to ensure the external APIs that allow applications to access customers' financial accounts, stored data, and privacy settings are secured and compliant with industry standards. FAPI 2.0 specifications provide the basis for doing so.

Strong Customer Authentication

How does the vendor support authentication, authorization, Open Banking strong customer authentication (SCA), and fine-grained authorization (transaction flows)?

Open Banking providers need to deliver business customers a wide range of SCA options to introduce the appropriate amount of friction and security needed to protect customer and business customer data. Higher assurance of verification can also be required to complete high-value transactions.

Where to Go from Here

Selecting the right B2B IAM solution is a strategic step toward improving security, efficiency, and collaboration across your third-party ecosystem. Start by defining your most important business objectives, strategic goals, and success indicators. Then, use the evaluation criteria outlined in this guide to assess your shortlist of vendors and focus on those best aligned with your business goals and equipped to support your specific identity, access, and governance needs.

Ping Identity has been recognized by leading analyst firms for its capabilities in this space, including:

Gartner® Magic Quadrant™: Access Management, 2025
Gartner Critical Capabilities: Access Management, 2025
KuppingerCole Leadership Compass: Identity Fabrics, 2024
KuppingerCole Leadership Compass: Access Management, 2025

At Ping Identity, we believe in making digital experiences both secure and seamless for all users, without compromise. That's digital freedom. Ping enables enterprises to combine best-in-class identity solutions with third-party services they already use to remove passwords, prevent fraud, enable Zero Trust, or anything in between — all with a simple drag-and-drop canvas. That's why more than half of the Fortune 100 choose Ping Identity to protect every single digital interaction from their users, while making experiences frictionless. Learn more at www.pingidentity.com.

¹ Verizon 2025 Data Breach Investigations Report

² Paul Fisher, KuppingerCole Analysts, March 2025 “B2B IAM: The Key to Secure Third-Party Access

³ CyberRisk Alliance, 2024, “From Trust to Security: Third-Party risk management strategies and challenges.”

⁴ Nicole Roseveare, March 2022. “Partners Health Management Drives Better Outcomes for Members and Communities.”

⁵ Cyentia Institute and SecurityScorecard, February 2023 “Research Report: Close Encounters of the Third (and Fourth) Party Kind.”

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