Multi-Factor Authentication – What Is MFA & How Does It Help My Business
Passwords by themselves have repeatably been shown to be vulnerable to attacks. Most common are phishing and social engineering attacks, but as per Hive Systems, they can also be compromised if they have been stored with traditional hash algorithms and with traditional lengths.
With growing security breaches, your business needs to get prepared. As per James Lyne, Global Head of Security Research at Sophos, nearly 30,000 websites are hacked per day.
From phishing attacks to social engineering, hackers use all sorts of attacks to trick your customers. So, you must take charge and replace the traditional authentication with an advanced one.
Today, we’ll discover what Multi-Factor Authentication is and how it can help your business.
What’s Multi-Factor Authentication?
Multi-Factor Authentication, or MFA, requires users to provide two or more identity factors for verifications.
Allow us to put it into perspective. Let’s say your customer is logging into your website. With MFA enabled, the user will be asked for a further factor once they have entered the correct password.
The second factor of authentication may be entering a code from an authenticator app on their phone, a code sent to their email, scanning a fingerprint, facial recognition, or answering a secret question.
A hacker may have the credentials of your customer. But they won’t get past the multiple verification walls, thanks to MFA. And according to Microsoft, MFA blocks 99.9% of enterprise account hacks.
3 Factors Involved in MFA
MFA is built upon the following three factors:
Knowledge
Knowledge is power. But in MFA’s setting, it’s the first door to successful authentication.
Something you know, like a Password, Answers to Secret Questions, and Pin are the initial stage of MFA.
But as knowledge can be retrieved, no wonder 81% of company data breaches are due to weak passwords.
Possession
Next, we have the possession factor that translates to something you have. That includes devices that generate OTPs, security keys, certificates, software tokens, FIDO tokens, etc.
The possession factor mainly relies on OTP/TOTP (Temporary One Time Passwords) generated via authentication apps.
Inherence
Lastly, inherence is something you are. This mostly includes but isn’t limited to fingerprint scans and facial recognition.
Some less-known inherence factors are voice, retina, iris scanning, and behavior analysis.
How Multi-Factor Authentication Can Improve Your Business
Here are three ways how your business can benefit from using Multi-Factor Authentication:
Solid Protection Against Security Breaches
According to a KnowBe4 survey, 38% of enterprise-size organizations and 62% of small & medium businesses don’t use MFA.
Integrating MFA into your business ensures you and your customers get more safety from hackers.
With an extra layer/layers of authentication, security consequences caused by human errors will stay mitigated by a 2nd factor. Your users must enter their password, provide something they have, and prove who they are.
Even if the knowledge factor of your customers is compromised, MFA will act as a solid line of defense to block unauthorized access.
Improved Authentication Experience
For some, MFA is a complicated way to authenticate users and the workforce. But in reality, it provides a seamless way to ensure an improved authentication experience.
Your customers, employees, and partners can use advanced MFA authentication methods to get easy & secure access. No need to set up complicated passwords as they can easily use MFA’s extra & trusted layers to prove their identity swiftly.
Increased Customer Trust
Your customers are more likely to trust you if you provide them uncompromised security.
With multi-factor authentication backing up your business, your clients will entrust you with their personal information. And according to Adobe’s 2022 Trust Report, 44% of global consumers will at least spend $500 annually on the brands they trust.
However, 55% of consumers say they will never do business with the brand if the trust is broken.
Stay Compliant with MFA
With multi-factor authentication spreading, many regulatory compliances require a business to integrate it.
For instance, PCI-DSS requires a business to back payment processing systems with multi-factor authentication. Moreover, MFA is listed as the number 7 point on the ACSC’s Essential 8 document.
Legislations concerning data protection are getting stricter every day. And multi-factor authentication is found among various regulations. So, using MFA gets you closer to adhering to multiple compliances.
Vault Vision – Helping Companies Integrate MFA Worldwide
At Vault Vision, we are helping enterprises, startups, and businesses integrate multi-factor authentication. Our no-code platform enables companies to easily back their services with passwordless login authentication like MFA.
We are certified and regulated by industry pioneers to protect your business from security breaches. Our company eliminate risks like XSS, CSRF, password spray, email phishing, and brute force attack.
Our no-code setup gets you up & running in no time to protect your business with multi-factor authentication. With MFA, your website and app authentication will require a user to prove their identity with a password plus a TOTP from an authenticator app.
Final Words
Multi-factor authentication has an excellent success rate of abandoning unauthorized access leading to security breaches and thefts. Also, it improves the overall authentication experience and builds customer trust.
We at Vault Vision are proud to present you with an easy and fast setup of MFA for your business website and app. Sign-up for our free trial plan with no credit card, or go professional for just $25/mo.
The security of your business is your responsibility! Don’t sleep on it, as hackers are trying to get your data once every 39 seconds.
Sources:
https://blog.miniorange.com/why-your-business-needs-multifactor-authentication-mfa/
https://www.zoho.com/blog/directory/why-is-mfa-important-for-your-business.html
https://systemseed.com/articles/5-reasons-why-your-business-needs-multi-factor-authentication
https://connect.comptia.org/blog/cyber-security-stats-facts
https://dataprot.net/statistics/data-breach-statistics/
https://www.cyber.gov.au/acsc/view-all-content/essential-eight https://soffid.com/cyber-attacks-set-to-become-uninsurable/#:~:text=According%20to%20Security%20Magazine%2C%20there,breaches%20come%20from%20human%20error.
