SA Security Management: The Re-evaluation of Authentication

The Re-evaluation of Authentication Published: April 05 2012, 09:21 PM by David Gormley Several articles and blogs about the recent Global Payments data breach have mentioned that the culprits were able to exploit some weak authentication methods to access the cardholder data. There is something those working in the security industry can do about that. In recent years companies have made an enormous amount of data available online for remote employees, partners and even customers. The same basic authentication methods like username and password or knowledge based authentication aren't enough to adequately protect the range of data that is currently available online, but it has been difficult for organizations to keep up as more applications and data are made available by different groups. I suspect that if organizations were to analyze all of the applications that they provide online access to and honestly evaluate the authentication methods in place, compared to the sensitivity of the data, there would be many areas of concern. In the past, additional authentication security typically required expensive and cumbersome solutions that were difficult to maintain and support. This scenario has changed in recent years. There are now solutions that provide a variety of advanced authentication methods which can be managed centrally and applied appropriately depending on the security requirements. For example: Some two-factor credentials can be implemented in a manner that is transparent to the end-user, their login experience can stay the same; Risk-based authentication tools can transparently analyze the context of a login or transaction, evaluate the relative risk and then adjust the level of authentication required. All of these options can be combined to create a policy-driven, layered security approach that is capable of protecting the wide range of data and access scenarios that a large organization must support in today's online world. The demands for online access at anytime, from anywhere and any device aren't going away. We need to adopt a flexible, layered security solution that is intelligent enough to understand the sensitivity of the underlying data, the risk of the current transaction and then apply the appropriate level of authentication security with the least possible disruption to the end user. That's how you securely enable business.