In the cloud based era, passwords are not enough to keep allof your business accounts secure and protected, which means businesses shouldbe considering Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) solutions. With the growth inpopularity of SaaS, even the very smallest businesses can have dozens ofdifferent accounts, each holding access to sensitive company or customer datawhich needs to be protected.
This can become extremely difficult for users to manage,especially as the average user now has over 100 different accounts. This causesemployees to use easily guessed, or reuse passwords across accounts, whichleaves gaps in the overall security of an organization. MFA can helporganizations deal with these security risks by helping employees to manageaccount access and ensuring that accounts have multiple layers of security. Everyapp, device and login is a pathway into your business, and organizations of allsizes need to ensure that they are protected. This article will cover the main identitysecurity risks facing businesses, and how multi-factor authentication can helpsolve them.
What are the main Identity Security Risks to Organizations?
Passwords and account credentials have never been moreimportant for the security of businesses. Whether you use Hubspot, Hotjar,Slack, Office 365, chances are you have multiple cloud based accounts that haveaccess to a whole host of important data concerning yourself, your employeesand your customers. All of this data can be accessed from one email address andpassword.
The issue is, passwords are more often than not, prettyunsecure. Research from LastPasshas found that 59% of people use the same password for multiple accounts. 47%of people use the same passwords at work as they do at home. This is a bigsecurity issue. Nobody likes having long, complex passwords with capital lettersand numbers and special characters, but the fact remains that without otherverification methods, the security of your account is based almost entirelyaround the security of your password.
However, even if you do use multiple, complex different passwords,unique to all your accounts, they’re still not secure. Successful phishingattacks can give attackers access to your account passwords by duping employeesinto logging into fake versions of a website. Attackers are also leveraging toolssuch as keylogging and password cracking to exploit weaknesses and get aroundeven the strongest password choices.
This puts all of your business, employee and customer dataat risk. Even using two-step verification does not totally secure a weakpassword, as hackers have begun innovative approaches to circumvent thissecurity measurement. For example, hackers can create tools to fake SMS messages,or send phishing emails, which confirms their access to an account.
Multi-Factor Authentication solutions aim to mitigate risksthat come from poor identity and access management.
What is Multi-Factor Authentication?
Multi-Factor Authentication is a security system that ensuresall of your business accounts require more than one level of authentication beforethey can be accessed. It was developed to add extra security steps to the loginprocess, to keep your accounts safe. It means that users are properly verifiedbefore they can gain access to accounts.
MFA uses multiple different categories of validation to verify users’ identity, more than the two commonly used for most accounts. It allows users to verify their identity with:
1. Something they know: This is the most basic security level and should commonly be a password. Many MFA solutions are integrated with Business Password Managers, which allow users to easily stay on top of all their different account passwords.
2. Something they have: This is a ‘possession’ layer of security, so requires something that the user owns. This is normally a text message sent to a user device, or some other push notification.
3. Something they are: The final level is a layer of security that only the correct user can provide. This is normally biometric controls, such as using a fingerprint or facial recognition.
On their own, anyone one of these three steps can be bypassed by a hacker. However together each are greater than the sum of their parts. It goes beyond 2-step authentication, and covers for the fact that there is no perfect authentication method. The best way to improve identity management is to use multiple methods in sync in order to cover the gaps in password security.
The Key Benefits of MFA
Strengthened Security
Multi-Factorauthentication can improve the security of your organization. As discussed, itcombines multiple authentication methods. It allows users to implementtraditional 2FA, biometrics and adaptive authentication to make business appseven more secure. Using multiple authentication methods means that if attackersmanage to brute-force a password, or use social engineering to attempt to gainaccess to account credentials, there are still multiple other levels ofsecurity in place to stop them accessing accounts.
Streamlined Access
HavingMulti-Factor Authentication in place helps end users, as it allows them to moreeasily take care of their multiple accounts and passwords. This may seem contradictory,as you’d think adding more steps into the login process would make things morecomplicated for end users, as there would ultimately be more steps to gettinginto an account.
However,MFA means that you can implement easier ways to access accounts, such as SingleSign-On. For example, if a user logs into Office 365 using MFA, they will beable to log in instantly to all other accounts using those credentials, astheir identity will have already been verified.
Agood MFA solution will also be very easy for end users to use, just requiring aquick SMS code or a tap of a fingerprint scanner. It ensures the privacy oftheir data, and should require very little time and effort.
Makes Life Easier for IT Departments
Alongsidestreamlining the login process for users, MFA also saves time for IT admins. Itshould offer admins a much easier way to police users login credentials toensure that everyone is secure, without having to worry about sending out remindersabout passwords.
Adminsget access to contextual controls, that can limit login access based on user locationor time, which can flag up when a request to login is not valid. Good MFAsolutions are highly scalable, and it’s easy to add new users as your business grows.They should also easily integrate with your existing applications, so that adminscan easily set policies over which type of accounts need MFA to access. Thesepolicies should be able to control access across the organization, at the groupand individual user level.
Agood MFA solution will also provide greater visibility with reporting. Adminsshould be able to see when users are logging into accounts, the security ofpasswords and credentials, and be able to check that users have MFA in place onall the accounts they need to. This can help admins to ensure they have comprehensivesecurity in place, and help them identity breaches much faster.
Ensures Compliance
The final benefit of having a MFA solution in place isensuring legal compliance. MFA is an important step in making sure you havestrong data protection mechanisms in place, as per legal requirements. Makingsure accounts and passwords are secure is crucial to protecting the data ofyour employees and users, especially if it concerns personal information orfinancial details. For example, if you use a CRM system to keep track ofcustomer data and purchases, you will be likely be required to have strongprotections in place.
Many data regulations such as GDPR and HIPAA may notspecifically require businesses to have MFA solutions in place, but do requirestrong authentication processes before employees can gain access to data. Formost businesses MFA tools are a good way to cover this basis.
However, you should always go beyond a ‘check-box’ approach to security and make sure that you use a high quality MFA solution, with the goal of comprehensive data security in mind rather than simply compliance.
Summary
There are a number of risks associated with identity facingbusinesses. Employees using weak passwords, or the same passwords for multipleaccounts, can leave organizations wide open to breaches. MFA can helporganizations to deal with these issues. They make life easier for employees,allowing them to more easily manage their different accounts securely. Theygive admins greater visibility and control over identity management. They alsohelp organizations achieve legal compliance with data regulations.
To help find the right MFA solution, you can read verifiedreviews of all of the top MFA products, written by customers themselves, atExpert Insights. Discover what customers themselves have to say about theproducts, as well as their top features and benefits.
Read reviews of the top MFA solutions here.
