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Identifier first authentication

Identifier first authentication first requests the user's identifier such as an email or username before prompting for a password or other authentication methods.

note

Identifier first authentication is required when using B2B Organization login.

This guide explains how to enable and use identifier first authentication in Ory Network and self-hosted Ory Kratos.

Ory Network​

To enable it:

    1. Log in to the Ory Console.
    1. Select your project.
    1. Navigate to Branding → Theming in the Ory Console.
    1. Disable "Use legacy Hosted UI".
    1. Test the flow in your application by navigating to the login page.

To revert, follow the same steps, enable "Use legacy Hosted UI", and click "Reset to Account Experience" on the Branding → UI URLs in the Ory Console.

Self-hosted Ory Kratos​

For Ory Enterprise License and Ory Apache 2.0 License users, set the following configuration in your kratos.yaml config file:

kratos-config.yaml
selfservice:
  flows:
    login:
      style: identifier_first

To disable this feature, set style to unified.

Account enumeration mitigation​

Account enumeration mitigation prevents malicious actors from being able to identify if a user exists or not.

By default, Ory does not prevent account enumeration in the identifier first authentication flow. This improves user experience as the user quickly knows if they have an account with the chosen identifier (email / username) or not. To enable account enumeration, use the Ory CLI patch command

ory patch identity-config --project <project-id> --add '/security/account_enumeration/mitigate=true'

or if you use a config file, add the following to your kratos.yaml config file:

kratos-config.yaml
security:
  account_enumeration:
    mitigate: true