According to Gartner, by end-2015, 50 per cent of new retail customer identities will be based on social network identities, from less than 5 per cent currently.
Along with federation technologies and mobile computing, social identity adoption will have a major impact on the practice of identity and access management (IAM) in 2013 and beyond.
However, the research firm adds that the lack of identity proofing and weak authentication for social network identities can expose merchants to more fraud. Service providers therefore have to defend themselves. They may allow social network registration, but augment the process with additional controls when a retail site provides access to sensitive data and monetary transactions. Alternatively, merchants may accept the increased risk without additional controls because of the potential increase in the number of customers and the volume of purchases; this approach “passes the buck” to payment card companies ? but they already have robust fraud detection and management tools and processes in place.
