Why is MFA considered essential for Cyber Security?
The rate of ransomware and malware attacks is growing rapidly—calling for reliable cybersecurity measures.
Cybercriminals use several sophisticated methods to steal sensitive data, like banking passwords and business secrets. With over 15 billion stolen credentials, they could easily access and breach your credentials and compromise your data.
This is where Multi-Factor Authentication security, aka MFA, plays a huge role in making it difficult for cybercriminals and hackers to access your data.
In this article, we’ll learn more about the importance of an MFA and why it’s an absolute necessity for cybersecurity in today’s age of increasing cyberattacks.
What Is Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA)?
Multi-Factor Authentication is an IT authentication method that requires two or multiple authentication factors to verify the user’s identity and grant access to their accounts or the network.
Thus, besides your regular credentials, username and password, MFA requires more authentication factors to grant access—adding an extra security layer and preventing hackers from accessing the user’s account or business network.
The three major types of authentication factors you can include in your Multi-Factor Authentication systems are:
- Something you know (knowledge): Passwords, PINs, security questions, etc.
- Something you have (possession): Smartphones or email to receive OTP, physical tokens, smartcards, etc.
- Something you are (inheritance): Biometrics, fingerprints, retinal scan, voice recognition, facial recognition, etc.
Hence, even if the hacker successfully compromises the user’s password, the second authentication factor makes it difficult to hack into the account and access data.
Let’s learn more Multi-Factor Authentication benefits for your organization.
5 Reasons You Need MFA For Cybersecurity
Here are the important MFA features that make implementing MFA security for your organization an absolute necessity.
Enables strong authentication
Weak or stolen passwords cause over 80% of hacking-related data breaches.
Hence, a risk-reduction solution like Multi-Factor Authentication is essential in a world where credential theft and harvesting are consistent threats.
With multiple authentication factors, MFA solutions reduce the risks of compromised weak passwords—thereby securing the user’s accounts and the organization's network.
Hence, this added security layer helps prevent data security breaches and preserve’s the business’s online reputation and customer trust.
Adapts to the changing workplace
With the rise of remote and work-from-home scenarios, as the workplace changes and employees work from different locations, organizations need advanced MFA solutions that effectively address complex user access requests.
This is where Adaptive Multi-Factor Authentication comes in.
Adaptive MFA evaluates the user request’s risk when they request access to certain information or company resources. For instance, it looks into and analyses the user’s device and location for context before granting them access to the requested resources.
Thus, whenever a user might request information from public cafes or airports with the help of unsecured public Wi-Fi connections, adaptive MFA requires them to verify additional authentication factors before accessing the information.
Offers strong security without compromising user experience
While using strong and complex passwords is important, it becomes much more difficult for employees to remember them, resulting in the IT teams having to address the user’s password reset requests repeatedly.
MFA secures the users, their devices, and their environments without requiring complicated password policies or password resets. Moreover, organizations can also facilitate the user experience for their employees by allowing them to choose the authentication factors or requiring the additional factors only when necessary.
MFA is easily deployable and can be integrated with multiple IT applications—allowing IT teams to invest their time and focus on more complicated tasks.
Compliant with regulatory requirements
One of the most crucial Multi-Factor Authentication advantages is that it helps meet several regulatory compliance requirements.
For instance, the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard strictly requires MFA implementation to prevent unauthorized and unauthenticated users from accessing critical payment processing systems.
Moreover, besides PCI-DSS, MFA helps the healthcare industry and providers meet and comply with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) regulations.
Compatible with Single Sign-On (SSO)
You can easily embed MFA with applications and integrate with Single Sign-On solutions, preventing users from creating multiple or reusing the same passwords for distinct applications when logging in.
MFA with SSO reduces friction while verifying and authenticating the user’s identity, saving time and improving productivity.
Conclusion
Multi-Factor Authentication is an important cybersecurity measure that helps protect employee passwords and accounts and the organization's critical information and resources.
Investing in a secure MFA solution is a highly efficient way to ensure data security and protect your network resources from malicious cyber attacks and hacking attempts. The InstaSafe company offers a secure Adaptive Multi-Factor Authentication solution to verify the user’s identity and enable smart, secure, and authenticated access with SSO and MFA. Check out our Zero Trust solutions at InstaSafe for your organization, and contact us today to learn more.
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