When the multifactor authentication is going to pick-up the race?

Businesses are embracing digitisation in an attempt to drive on-demand services and Multifactor authentication (MFA) is an essential service, as it adds additional layers of security. Each organization is different, and therefore, will have unique needs. The right MFA solution should strike a balance between added security and user convenience. With the increasing vulnerability, Cybercriminals can now use a type of phishing to get around two-factor authentication, typically a code sent to your cell phone that is needed to log in. Experts have advised enabling two-factor to add an extra layer of security. Hence, there is a need for multi-factor authenticity and is expected to pick-up the race. To your surprise, there are organisations into cybersecurity that trains people to spot phishing, or spoofed emails. One can see in real time and you don’t need a special lens to see how things are happening. Multifactor authentication combines two or more independent credentials: what the user knows (password), what the user has (security token) and what the user is (biometric verification).

At the centre of this transformation Multi Factor Authentication has emerged as the backbone for innovation-driven growth. MFA creates a layered defense and makes it more difficult for an unauthorized person to access a target such as a physical location, computing device, network or database. Increasingly, vendors are using the label "multifactor" to describe any authentication scheme that requires more than one identity credential. Research says two-factor authentication can be bypassed by attacking weaknesses in its implementation, as well as other system weaknesses. One tactic is to exploit self-service password resets. At the same time, the attacker can insert themselves into the process and can gain access as a result.

Secondly, one of the larger, unforeseeable challenges are emerging from the cyber criminals, targeting the “remote Work” for an entire workforce. Public Cloud services enabled fast & smooth migration to “working from home” by enabling connectivity from anywhere and supporting essential services such as video conferencing & real-time communication. With a lot of organizations rolling-out permanent “remote-work”, Cloud services are here to stay.

FBI warned businesses that SIM swapping was on the rise and that the attackers were increasingly using SIM swaps to attack companies, citing a rise in complaints to the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center. There are also automated phishing attack tools that fraudsters can use to bypass two-factor authentication. A toolkit highlighted last year at the Hack in the Box conference that acts as a web proxy. When victims authenticate within the malicious website, their session tokens are provided to the attacker. They can then be used to authenticate to the targeted website, which the legitimate website interprets as a correctly authenticated user session.

With the smartphone, users are now accustomed to authenticating with built-in biometric fingerprints or facial recognition scans or using one-time passwords sent via SMS or pushed within apps to a trusted device. It is common for mobile forms of authentication to be used to access financial apps, social media, and enterprise collaboration tools. The success of mobile authentication means much of the future of multifactor authentication is to bring your own. Last but not the least, the battle to continue to defend the authentication process isn't going to let up soon. Authentication innovations increase security while maintaining usability and are sure to continue to evolve.