As businesses are transitioning to a password-free future, passwordless authentication helps companies to prevent security breaches caused due to weak password choices and management. It allows users to utilize credentials like a biometric, proximity badge, OTP, magic link login, or hardware token code.
Passwordless authentication accelerates security and simplifies user authentication, as these credentials are difficult to steal or copy. Therefore, businesses must build effective strategies and look out for critical considerations of passwordless authentication.
Implementation Strategies for Passwordless Authentication
With heavily outdated passwords, organizations must reinforce the company’s security and productivity with a robust solution. Implementation of passwordless authentication is challenging. Here are a few practical steps to be considered.
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Establish a Replacement Use Case
Before implementing a new login passwordless process authentication, businesses must understand what solution. Therefore, assessing the requirements beforehand can save time and effort. It is crucial to building a comprehensive overview of numerous departments and the applications they interact with. This step is essential to develop thorough and accurate communication with stakeholders to clarify the scalability adequately.
At the same time, businesses often establish an understanding of each applicant’s authentication methods from hundreds of applications. Therefore, it is essential to focus on the consolidated authentication workflows into one central management structure rather than mapping and replicating each application’s security. This allows businesses to follow the same authentication paths that help streamline the crucial factors of passwordless solution must-haves.
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Conduct a Risk Assessment and Prioritize
After businesses have understood the requirements and communicated with a relevant passwordless solution provider, it is time to prioritize the process. A practical analysis of the risks that come with each information system must be performed. This will help determine the probability and effects of the vulnerabilities and potential threats. Risk assessment clarifies each system’s needs and its relative risk level. At the same time, it will allow businesses to prioritize the process with a rapid and active rollout that aims at the highest-risk systems.
Also Read: Passwordless Authentication: A New Mode of Business Security
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Minimize the User-Visible Password Surface Area
Ensuring user adoption is a critical aspect while implementing passwordless authentication. Users rely on passwords regularly; hence, a transforming step toward building a passwordless environment is diminishing as many password login attempts as possible. This will also allow the users to seamlessly transition from one system to another. This habit will erode the password authentication processes at any credential screen, increasing the organization’s defense against potential threats.
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Transformation to Passwordless Deployment
Once businesses have diminished the number of users encountering password prompts, it is an ideal time to transition to a genuinely passwordless environment. In a perfect passwordless environment, users might never experience an authentication prompt to access any system or network.
However, if an authentication device is lost, businesses need to eliminate the lost credential from the system even though a PIN or a biometric feature earlier protected it.
Organizations must ensure that the passwordless provider incorporates an admin control panel allowing them to access and change the enrolled devices quickly. At the same time, it gives some real-time insights into the lost device and credentials through a quick interface and then adds a new appliance. Importantly, keeping a close eye on user complaints and concerns will allow us to deploy a more flexible passwordless solution and modify the approach.
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Strike Out Passwords from the Identity Directory
The last step to achieve a passwordless environment is to eliminate the users who are stroked off the password process. A passwordless strategy aims to modernize a passwordless climate on every application. Passwordless is sometimes irrelevant for a traditional or bespoke application. Therefore, businesses might have to retain the password in numerous places. However, this is a notable flaw, and companies need to deploy alternatives to diminish the threats that might cause due to this reason.
Critical Considerations for Passwordless Authentication
Due to a seemingly long list of credential-based security breaches globally, an organization’s challenging and risky process is to authenticate the employees with good passwords. As per a recent report by Acronis, “Acronis Cyber Protection Operation Center Report: Cyberthreats in the second half of 2022“, the average data breach cost is expected to reach $5 million in 2023. The root cause of the breach is an anonymous user behind weak credentials that represent a weak link in cyber security. Therefore, businesses must focus on these key considerations to eliminate threats and achieve a passwordless environment.
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Password Revamping
It is quite challenging to eliminate all the passwords simultaneously. Therefore, it is vital to establish a password reset mechanism for the passwordless strategy. These tools allow the user to open the account screen and choose the actions associated with the incorrect password rather than contacting the help desk. The user can then enter the new password and authenticate with the tool stationed by the organization. The self-service password reset builds a more effortless user experience and saves costs and effort. Interestingly, these tools can easily integrate with the organization’s network, cloud applications, and identity platforms.
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Interoperability
Businesses work with many platforms and requirements, making scaling, managing, and modernizing challenging. The biggest challenge is interoperability, one of the limiting aspects of passwordless experiences. An effective combination of current and traditional services is highly needed. It is safe to procure a 1-3-5-year roadmap from the prospects to provide siloed data and infrastructure. Hence, when investing in new technology, it is vital to ensure that these are built on modern architectures and robust enough to meet current needs. At the same time, it must have an open API and an SDK to integrate contemporary and traditional technologies. More importantly, does the technology adheres to the regulations and standards like the Fast Identity Online (FIDO) for Passwordless and iBeta Biometric certification? With these factors, businesses can set a successful path by implementing a technology that fits their needs and will continue the modernization path keeping everything online, accessible, and secure.
Also Read: Unpatched vulnerabilities in the Akuvox smart intercom can be exploited for espionage
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Identity
A foundational factor to security is identity. Monitoring and tracking who is accessing resources are essential to determine whether they should be granted access. Multiple platforms utilize an identity-based authentication approach to ensure that individuals are whom they claim to be. These platforms offer a quick and convenient way to self-verify the identity with the help of government, telco, and banking credentials. It provides businesses with a frictionless experience with the solid assurance of identity on the other side of the digital connection. Incorporating identity into the network security will help CISOs regain control of the IT services from anonymous users with compromised credentials. Furthermore, organizations will no longer be held hostage to data breaches perpetrated through identity deception with an identity-based authentication.
Passwords for authentication are majorly suitable for businesses and users with limited accounts. However, with the ever-increasing digital footprint, passwords are a threat rather than a security necessity. Fortunately, companies can transition to MFA and SSO forms of passwordless authentication rather than relying on outdated methods.
Furthermore, working towards a seamless passwordless rollout requires a cohesive view of the organization that will determine the user experience at every level. This will help businesses release the ever-evolving threats to provide users with a smoother login process than ever before.
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