NRI Secure Technologies: Uni-ID Libra 2.4

Short Summary

Consumer Identity and Access Management (CIAM) is the fastest-growing specialty within IAM because organizations increasingly need to manage large volumes of customer identities while delivering smooth digital experiences. Unlike enterprise IAM, CIAM must provision, authenticate, authorize, and store consumer identity data gathered from many (sometimes unauthoritative) sources, often optimizing onboarding through mobile and social logins. Implementing CIAM introduces challenges such as customer populations that are orders of magnitude larger than employee directories, plus rising obligations around privacy (e.g., GDPR, PSD2) and anti-fraud requirements. At the same time, CIAM creates opportunities to use rich customer data for marketing analytics.

NRI Secure Technologies’ Uni-ID Libra (version 2.4) provides core CIAM capabilities—authentication, authorization/federation, and risk analysis—through a management console and REST APIs. Its ID Repository uses a single extensible schema, supports SCIM 2.0 provisioning, REST/JSON integration, encrypted data storage, and comprehensive logging. Consumers can self-register and manage fine-grained consent via a web UI with privacy-by-default toggles, including parental control and consent withdrawal; it also supports data portability, deletion (“right to be forgotten”), and processing restriction (with some actions requiring admin involvement).

Authentication supports passwords, extensive OTP methods, and strong FIDO coverage (UAF, U2F, FIDO2/WebAuthn), plus passwordless “magic link” email flows and adaptive step-up via a risk engine. Social login integrations include major platforms such as Google, LINE, and Yahoo! Japan. Authorization supports OIDC/OAuth2, SAML 2.0, and JWT, with OpenID Connect FAPI on the roadmap and OpenID Connect CIBA included. Deployment spans on-premises, IaaS, and single-tenant hosting, with microservices (Spring Boot), Ansible-based setup, and container/Kubernetes support; MFA and Risk Engine can be separately licensed and deployed.

Interesting Facts

• Uni-ID Libra was first developed in 2008 and rebranded/relaunched as Uni-ID Libra in mid-2017.
• NRI Secure Technologies was founded in 2000 as a subsidiary of Nomura Research Institute (NRI).
• Nat Sakimura is an author of the OpenID Connect specification and a board member of the OpenID Foundation.
• NRI Secure was the first Japanese company to obtain an OpenID Connect Certification.
• Uni-ID Libra version 2.4 provides CIAM components for authentication, authorization, and risk analysis with a management console and REST APIs.
• The ID Repository supports SCIM 2.0 provisioning and REST/JSON integration.
• Consumer data is stored in encrypted form and data processing operations are logged.
• Supported authentication options include username/password, FIDO UAF, and OTP via SMS, telephony, email, software token, and OATH-compliant hardware TOTP.
• Uni-ID Libra 2.4 includes support for OpenID Connect CIBA.
• Uni-ID Libra can be deployed on-premises, on IaaS, or as a hosted single-tenant service, and as of 2.4 supports Docker and Kubernetes.

Notable Quotes

• “Consumer Identity and Access Management (CIAM) has become the fastest-growing specialty within Identity and Access Management.”
• “Consumer IAM systems provision, authenticate, authorize, collect and store identity and other information about consumers from many, and sometimes unauthoritative sources.”
• “Customer identities may be orders of magnitude more numerous than the employee identities enterprises have been managing.”
• “Many enterprises plan to use the stream of rich customer data collected in these systems for marketing analyses.”
• “The consent management is fine-grained with options for parental control and provides the ability to withdraw consent at any time.”
• “All user data is stored in an encrypted format.”
• “Adaptive authentication is available by leveraging the Uni-ID Libra risk engine and MFA capabilities.”
• “Some example use cases for OpenID Connect CIBA are to authenticate a caller using a mobile push to a customer device from a call-center or authorizing a customer payment via their phone at a kiosk terminal.”
• “Uni-ID Libra is deployed as multiple microservices using Spring Boot with a GUI driven installation and configuration based on Ansible.”
• “The company has no current plans for a multi-tenant SaaS offering.”