The financial industry alongside leading businesses is facing a prime risk that is the exploitation of information. For instance, address and personal information. The e-commerce industry is the most prone to address frauds as they deal with sensitive information that is necessary to deliver the parcel to the right buyers. The other way around, platforms face chargebacks, compensations, and misplaced deliveries. This proves that criminals are getting sophisticated and improved means are needed to be employed to put gates in their way.
To combat this menace, industries need to employ an additional security layer that is 2-factor authentication. This provides various factors that a platform can use while assisting customers. Firstly, they can verify identities and secondly cross-check the customer by sending a One-Time Pin (OTP) either through an SMS or e-mail. Passwords are now largely going vulnerable and less reliable. Hence, to ensure customer satisfaction and businesses’ worth, they need 2FA.
Why are the All-time Secure Passwords Going Vulnerable?
Dating back to 1961, when the Massachusetts Institute of Technology came up with the Compatible Time-Sharing System (CTSS). They did this to provide every student with an equal opportunity to use a computer. There were logins made and students could use their respective passwords to access their profiles. However, within some years students with criminal intentions figured out that hacking the system was not a difficult task. Ever since single-factor authentication is not enough to secure privacy and canary out the user document verification. Below are some of the reasons why passwords have become less resilient:
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Increased Number of Accounts
As every business is shifting its processes online, only one account will not serve as the solution for all. Therefore, customers are opening more accounts. For instance, designate accounts for banks, shopping platforms, and other online sites. This leads to password recycling – the phenomenon where customers use the same password for multiple accounts. This can lead to dramatic consequences as if a hacker will get access to the password, logging in to the rest of the account won’t be difficult.
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Human’s Memory is Less Capable
As per the report published by TheHackerNews, 1.4 billion of the stolen passwords were simple numbers or alphabets. These mainly included 12345678, qwerty, or dates of birth. This proves that the memory of the majority of human users is lousy which makes it tough for them to remember complex passwords. However, two-way authentication provides global checks and easy-to-login options.
Multiple Factors of Authentication – Ensuring User Verification
OTP is a common practice of today however, for more security, 2FA has five more factors to offer.
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Possession Factor
The possession factor refers to the personal identity information that a customer possesses. Customers provide information that they only know.
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Location Factor
Moving on to the location factor. This verifies the current and exact location of the customer. This is how businesses can gain know-how of where the client is located. If a criminal or fakester tries to log in to an account of someone else, the location can verify them within minutes.
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Knowledge Factor
Knowledge factor includes the information that only the particular customer knows. Here, a password is one such type. This is how customers can verify their identities. To back this up more, platforms combine possession and knowledge factor to make 2FA a reality.
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Time Factor
This is the most common type nowadays. The financial sector and banks are widely employing this factor. Customers might see a notification like “the session has expired”, which means that the time is defined. This way platforms can make sure that authentic customers are logging in to the account. Furthermore, if fraudsters are trying to access the account platforms can detect them in time.
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Inherence Factor
An inheritance authentication factor is the use of traits that solely belong to one person. These include retina scans, biometrics, fingerprints, and others. Among these, fingerprints are the most common. With technological advancement, cell phones come with in-built fingerprint scanners. This has made the technique easier. Customers can simply associate fingerprints with their accounts and login in an instance. Adding to these is voice or face recognition.
Global Checks Coupled with 2FA – The Ultimate Solution
Criminals are stopping at nothing to exploit information and gain whatever benefits they can. Therefore, industries need enhanced solutions like 2-factor authentication to ensure information security. Over years, phishing and hack attempts have drastically increased. This has greatly compromised the information of global customers. Through 2FA platforms can locate and identify customers in real-time. With multiple factors, they can also inculcate multi-factor authentication to add more layers of encrypted security. This includes employing more than one of the previously-mentioned factors.
