DigiKey is one of the world's leading electronic component distributors with a truly overwhelming operation. A multi-billion-dollar company, DigiKey sells more than 15 million components, works with 2,900 suppliers, and serves nearly one million customers in 180 different countries. Jeff Johnson, director, information technology security for DigiKey has been with the organization since 2015. Jeff offered a great visual of the products the company sells, "Imagine if you smash a smart phone–DigiKey sells most of the pieces."

Within DigiKey's organization, identity acts in a similar manner: Authenticating and authorizing employees and customers to access the right apps and data physically, digitally and remotely, all working together to create a positive, efficient, secure and successful enterprise. Recently, DigiKey's "MFA Everywhere" project delivered substantial gains in user productivity and user experience, driven by reducing the need for daily MFA prompts by approximately 82%. This decrease equates to approximately $570,000 annually in recovered productivity time, as users are no longer interrupted by frequent authentication prompts. Here's how…

DigiKey and its Initial Identity Journey

DigiKey delivers components to major manufacturers of items like satellites, prosthetics, universities with teams of students building projects, and even individuals innovating out of their garages. In the past ten years, DigiKey's growth has boomed, going from <$1b per year in revenue to over $5B in 2022.

DigiKey began its identity journey in 2015 with PingFederate, deploying single sign-on (SSO) to improve the user experience for its workforce. It has since become the de facto architecture for new systems and provides a frictionless experience for every system that supports open-source standards for federation.

Jeff and his team quickly saw an opportunity to wield identity as a competitive advantage.

Indeed, the platform performed as well if not better than expected. "Throughout the years, Ping has proven it can scale with us. Ping has bigger customers than us so it is really not a concern."

Jeff also applauded Ping's transparent capabilities to track and monitor performance for customers on https://status.pingidentity.com. "It makes it easy to know if there's an issue and the status of it, but also provides a transparent way of demonstrating Ping's track record".

MFA Everywhere and Passwordless

DigiKey's team is constantly looking for new ways to provide secure and yet exceptional user experiences so they had their eyes on multi-factor authentication (MFA) and passwordless for many years.

The clincher was that DigiKey's cyber insurance agency mandated an improved security posture. Just as hackers were getting smarter, so were cyber insurance agencies. Luckily, Jeff and his team were prepared.

In 2022, DigiKey deployed PingOne Protect (formerly PingOne Risk). Jeff explained, "Instead of taking a risk-based approach on where we enable MFA, we changed all our policies to include PingOne Risk and MFA as our standard practice. So even with our non-risky SaaS providers, we have MFA-enabled because it does not affect their experience or friction. So we thought, 'Why not be safe? What if their site ends up being sensitive in some matter or becomes a jumping off point for testing credentials, etc.' So we are putting MFA everywhere."

One place that matters most is DigiKey's workforce and its exceptional 2.2 million square foot Product Distribution Center expansion (PDCe). This state-of-the-art facility includes innovative technology, tons of automation and designed to scale and optimally serve customers throughout the years.

The facility, in conjunction with DigiKey's partnerships with companies like UPS, USPS, DHL and FedEx, help ship an average of 25,000 orders each day. Since adding PingOne Risk, DigiKey has experienced a significant reduction in MFA prompts.

DigiKey is deploying MFA for workers in this enormous facility and offices around the world as well as contractors and remote workers–about 5,000 total. "We had the technology turned on and up and running within weeks," Jeff said.

DigiKey is also beginning to execute upon an ambitious passwordless strategy. "We have some authentication flows where we removed the password and the user experience is seamless," Jeff said. "And we are looking for more saturation in the near future to continue our goal of passwordless for workforce."

Next Identity Steps

"We expect to see continued growth in our customer count," Jeff said. "And we want to make sure they are served in the very best way we can."

To meet those goals, DigiKey rolled out customer MFA. Jeff explained, "MFA is the necessary ingredient to offer future frictionless digital experiences we hope will delight customers."

Stay tuned as Ping reports on DigiKey's ongoing identity innovations, learning how identity provides a secure and frictionless experience, which helps fuel growth.