Multi-factor authentication generally used for two or more means for establishing a user’s identity prior to granting access to a specific applications, payments, or services. Authentication factors usually include in the reference of user’s personal information or user’s specific physical attribute. The multi-factor authentication is considered as the secure mean to protect user’s personal information same as a password or confidential pin.

In today’s scenario, the nature of multi-factor authentication is changing in some fundamental ways:

Expanding usage: The demand for multi-factor authentication is increasingly growing at

Multi-factor authentication generally used for two or more means for establishing a user’s identity prior to granting access to a specific applications, payments, or services. Authentication factors usually include in the reference of user’s personal information or user’s specific physical attribute. The multi-factor authentication is considered as the secure mean to protect user’s personal information same as a password or confidential pin.

In today’s scenario, the nature of multi-factor authentication is changing in some fundamental ways:

Expanding usage: The demand for multi-factor authentication is increasingly growing at a rapid pace. Looping on the past records, authentication was often deployed with an organization to address specific groups and use case such as VPN access. Now every social network portal is coming up with an standard authentication operating procedure for broader set of users and to protect user personal data as cloud-based services, safeguarding access to collaboration portals. Leading vendors such as Microsoft, LinkedIn, Facebook, Dropbox, and Twitter have added capabilities for multifactor authentication to their online service.

Growing urgency: The increasing demand of multi-factor authentication continues to rapidly escalate with an immediate force of action. The urgent demand is majorly driven to address compliance mandates, to sustain security in the midst of emerging trends such as bring your own device, proliferation of cloud services, and collaboration tools. For example, in the cloud environments, several multiple tiers and types of administrators have offered easy access to infrastructure and assets, and multifactor authentication can be considered as a major mechanism for preventing unauthorised access and enforcing unified access policies.

Evolving technology: Given the shifts in the technological environment brought about by cloud services and mobile device proliferation, there has been a fundamental evolution in terms of how authentication is used and implemented. For example, the increased use of smart phones in an enterprise means that more people are using their mobile devices to access corporate resources. Likewise, the distribution and decentralisation of data and application across the enterprise and the cloud means that users have to authenticate to more resources. 

To gain a better understanding of how the authentication landscape is evolving, SafeNet conducted a survey of around 350 senior IT and security professionals around the world. This survey is the second SafeNet has conducted on this topic; the first was carried out about a year before, and this report offers some comparisons with these prior results to highlight some key trends that have been identified.

Summary of Top Findings

Following are a few of the most significant findings the survey uncovered:

• Cloud-based authentication quickly gaining widespread acceptance. When asked whether they prefer cloud- or server-based authentication models, almost 33% indicated they preferred cloud-based authentication. One year prior, only about 20% said they preferred cloud-based authentication. This increased preference for cloud-based offerings is also in evidence in the growing adoption of SaaS-based offerings more generally as well as the increased adoption rates of SafeNet’s authentication-as-a-service offering.
• Employee usage expanding.

Around 26% of employees use multi-factor authentication, while more than 32% had indicated that was the case one year ago. Over 9% expect that less than 10% of the workforce will be using these types of authentication in two years. IT organizations are making prompt access controls, particularly as the use of cloud offerings and mobile devices continues to provide new means of accessing corporate data and services- while at the same thing creating new vulnerabilities.

• Substantial increase expected in mobile user authentication.

According to the current scenario, around 34% of respondent’s states more than half of employees using multi-factor authentication in order to access corporate resources from their mobile devices, and 54% expect that to be the case in two years.

• Authentication costs run the gamut.

Around 19% are spending less than €15 annually per user on authentication. Moreover, around 10% of users are spending more than €48. The wide variance in per-user costs can be attributed to a couple factors. For example, 43% of respondents work with companies with more than 1,000 employees, and large size organizations can commonly be able to negotiate for more heavily discounted token pricing when purchasing in bulk.  In addition, larger organizations may take reformed structured approach to their authentication implementations enabling them to capitalize on all the potential cost savings that can be realized by automating as many processes as possible.

• Software-based authentication shortly to eclipse hardware based.

In today’s time, software-based authentication is on the verge to assure the major lead in the coming two years. Hardware-based approaches are used by 48% of respondents, but around 41% is anticipated to be doing in the next two years. Furthermore, the need of software-based alternatives is projected to witness the growth from 40% to 50% in future. The growing preference for software-based alternatives has also been reflected in the makeup of SafeNet’s token sales. SafeNet offers number of token alternatives, including a wide range of hardware and software-based offerings. SafeNet’s customers promptly look to control costs while noticing the increased demand for authentication.

Conclusion

In the recent past, the scope of protecting personal information of the users is bring powerful advancements in the industry. The move to mitigate the risks of static user names and passwords has been carried out for sometime, and the survey also confirms that management teams have understood the increasing necessity to secure access to more applications, manage more identities, and safeguard more endpoints. To contend with BYOD, organizations can increase implementation of strong authentication for users of mobile devices. To address all these demands, security organizations will be well served by authentication platforms that offer prompt automation, support for multiple use cases, and flexible delivery options. These realities are clearly a huge reason that cloud-based authentication, virtually an unknown a few years ago.