Last month we hosted the final session in our webinar series on Microsoft Azure AD B2C. We closed the series in style, with a panel of Condatis experts coming together to bring you a discussion on the challenges and considerations for large scale systems. This blog rounds up the Q&A from the day.
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In this panel discussion, our team discussed their experience of deploying Microsoft Azure AD B2C for our client systems. From the days of early adopters, changes in the product, to where we are today, and where our panelists see identity moving in the future.
Backed by our team’s wealth of experience, they were able to share their learnings, experiences, and success from existing case studies. With a specialist line-up from across the business, our Head of Accounts, Ian Waters, discusses customer identity. Architect David Manning goes in-depth on all things security, privacy, and integration from an architectural viewpoint, whilst our Senior Developer, Dave Downs, breaks down putting requirements into practice and developing systems to suit customer needs.
Q&A
Why should I come to Condatis for my Microsoft Azure AD B2C requirements as opposed to doing it myself?
Over the last six months, through our webinar series on B2C, we have demonstrated that B2C can do almost anything you want it to do. We’ve provided examples on how to do it and how to do it properly based on our experience; it’s a no-brainer. We ensure the start to finish process is of a high-quality standard: the quality use of policy hierarchies, the additional security Condatis build, the security built around securing APIs for API calls, tailoring journeys to your needs to future-proof them and ensure they’re performant and flexible.
We use a secure development lifecycle as part of our development process. Coming to Condatis, customers benefit massively, from defining a strategy right through to going live and supporting and maintaining quality systems.
In a nutshell, it’s the security and the processes we follow, going beyond just the ability to make B2C policies but ensuring your system will work now and in the future.
What is needed for a properly international system?
From a developer’s perspective, the most obvious thing to the users would be the localisation – making sure that the pages B2C display are rendered in the language based on the users’ culture. For example, this might be languages aligning with the user, English for an English speaker, or French for a French-speaking user. This can be defined in the B2C policies, or it can be set up as a custom solution that applies it to the pages based on externally managed data stored.
Another consideration for an international system is a globally distributed infrastructure. If there are people from different parts of the world accessing the system, the content and the APIs must be local to those users so that there is no lag as they go through their authentication process. To do this, consider using Content Delivery Networks (CDNs), making use of traffic management, and having various resources present strategically in whatever infrastructure used.
The third consideration, data locality – you’ve got your pages rendered in the right language for the user. You’ve got content, data, and API calls being made from the right location, ensuring a speedy process for the user. However, where are the user data and general data going to be stored? Like the globally distributed infrastructure, you want the directory that the user’s details are coming from to be close to the user, so there isn’t any lag. Compliance and local laws are important considerations as well. Following GDPR, consider if you need specific user’s data to be stored in certain regions – based on the laws within that country.
These three big considerations are generally the main ones but don’t forget about the actual architecture. Considerations should go beyond ensuring that are locally distributed; it also extends to having the likes of failover set up, correct network configurations, and pretty much everything that goes into building a system of that scale and testing a system of that scale.
Thank you!
We want to thank everyone involved in contributing to the webinar series, Securing your IT real-estate with Microsoft Azure AD B2C. From our brilliant presenters across the entirety of the sessions to all of our attendees. We hope our attendees have been able to learn something from our experts. Look out for future Condatis events and let us know what you thought of this series through our feedback form.