Amazon Cognito vs. Fischer Identity as a Service

Well Suited

1. B2C mobile and web apps with a high number of users.
2. Cheaper and cost-effective.
3. If the other pieces of the infra are already using AWS services like Lambda, S3, Pinpoint, etc.

Not Suited For:

1. Advanced use-cases (Biometrics based authentication) Email, and other MFA channels.
2. For any use-cases needing SCIM.
3. Customized flows of SSO, and MFA will need a layer on Lambda and other AWS services.

Incentivized

Fischer is well suited for the use case scenarios where an institution has not previously used any identity management and needs to quickly provide services to meet regulatory or other deadlines. It also works well when you can implement in smaller batches of user accounts and grow over time. We have found it less appropriate for cases where we have needed to set up on-off temporary or special access. Fischer has worked with us on out-of-band provisioning but we had to pay for extra Fischer professional services to make that work.

Incentivized

• Strong integration with React.js and client-side applications
• Easy to bridge Cognito identities with the rest of the AWS ecosystem
• Easy to store user profile data directly in Cognito rather than having to build additional services/endpoints
• Easy integration with AWS Lambda to extend and add sophistication to the service

Incentivized

• Integration with ERP
• Integration with Account Directory
• Integration with Office 365
• Password Reset Portal

Incentivized

• Amazon Cognito has a bit of a learning curve. You need to learn its concepts and terminology. The documentation does not describe some topics comprehensively.
• Some Console screens would benefit from improved search and filtering options.
• When another AWS product (e.g., SageMaker) configures Cognito on your behalf, it is not clear what you're getting. For example, the expiration of a temporary password was configured but never communicated.

Incentivized

• Reducing the frequency (twice a month) of scheduled outages. But I believe they are making progress toward developing a more robust cloud infrastructure that will eliminate the need for such frequent downtimes.
• There are some less than intuitive administration tools, which could be improved. Fisher is always willing to help us when we don't understand the proper way to configure using the tools.
• I would like a streamlined way to move changes from our test environment into our production (live) environment instead of having to duplicate the effort.

Incentivized

Amazon Cognito is easy to use and implement if you don't need to implement custom policies. But if your security team requires something outside the box, then implementation becomes complicated and you risk wasting time. There is no option for customizable regex for passwords, which is a major deficiency. The standard password policy, allow to choose the length of the password, if it should contains at least one number, one special character, one uppercase letter and one lowercase letter.

Incentivized

Community support is excellent, many times even better and quicker then the offical AWS support. I really cannot recommend community support enough! Apart from that the service is relativily easy to use and does not have a huge learning curve. Examples are easy to follow and will help you start using the service.

Incentivized

They are ideal tools to create a secure and unique login experience for our applications. Thanks to its API authorization, Amazon Cognito ensures connections to applications that are secure.It is easy to use and provides easy access to files and applications that you need to complete your goal.

Incentivized

It does deliver as advertised, provided you do your homework and understand the expected outcome before going live. Poor planning can turn the project into a nightmare. It can save the company a good deal of man hours and money by bringing about identity management automation, a self-service portal, and customizable email notifications for all of the identity owners and other stakeholders. For example, you can inform your HR team upon successful account creation and disablement. You can proactively reach out to users informing them about their account extirpation status, etc.

Incentivized

• ROI is great for Amazon Cognito Overall.
• It is included in the AWS Free Tier so you can use it for a good amount without paying, so the software can be tested beforehand.
• The paid pricing is also affordable, so a positive impact on ROI.

Incentivized

• Fischer has had a positive impact by providing self-serve identity and password management tools that our constituents can use at their convience, not tied to our operational hours.
• Fisher Identity as a Service has been a significant cost, but it is anticipated that it saves our students significant time and effort that they can better dedicate to their academic pursuits.
• Negative initial reaction--as this was a new way of doing things, there was a period of confusion among our college constituent that required additional communication and instruction

Incentivized