Passwordless authentication appears to be the new belle of the ball amongst tech experts. Of course, the reasons all bother on the general challenges experienced by security companies and businesses.

The security and tech world continue to advance in scope and sphere – through developing efforts to improve existing structure. These changes are prompted by the ongoing surge in security breaches in which no industry is spared.

Security issues surrounding weak passwords serve as a driving factor for these breaches — and a nightmare for IT departments. As secure as some might believe them to be,, passwords remain the weakest link in today’s workplace security network. Stolen credentials are costly to resolve and come with many negative impacts.

As organizations rethink the future of the workspace, passwordless authentication seems to be a way out.

What is Passwordless Authentication?

Passwordless authentication is any method that eliminates the reliance on passwords to provide a a smoother user experience, stronger security posture, and reduced costs.

Passwordless authentication uses methods of identity proof to replace the use of passwords, passphrases, and other shared secrets. The replacements take OTPs as an alternate means. Authenticator apps, biometrics, hardware, and software tokens make up other forms.

Businesses encourage the adoption of passwordless authentication because it removes all vulnerabilities associated with secret-based passwords. But, there’s a constraint – the market is not fully ready for its adoption. Business enterprises struggle to cover the various use cases with a single solution.

Challenges of Password Authentication

Security Limitations

Passwordless authentication is not entirely foolproof, although it’s better than a password. Hackers can use malware to intercept one-time passwords. They also insert trojans into a browser to gain access.

Costs of Deployment

The implementation of passwordless authentication requires high costs. It comes with new software, hardware, trained employees, and more. Passwordless authentication also entails a change in management plans and projects.

The deployment also comes with hardware installations and the purchase of gadgets. In addition, the choice of software comes with hidden costs, software administration, maintenance, and migration.

Passwordless Authentication Methods

Biometric Authentication

It is a method that requires using biological characteristics such as facial features and fingerprints. This authentication method allows users to instantly log into their devices .

One-Time Passcodes (OTP)/PIN

The OTP is a method that puts the responsibility of generating dynamic codes on the service provider. As a result, it eliminates having to remember passwords or downloading apps.

Foremost in this category is the time-based one-time password (TOTP). The TOTP is a transient method and must be in sync with the time zone. It works with algorithms that generate passwords on a server and client whenever there’s system authentication. A major drawback is that a user may mistakenly tap multiple times to generate a token. When this happens, they have to restart the process.

Push Notifications Authentication

Push notifications work with an installed app on the user’s phone. The user receives a notification on a registered device containing the logins date, time, and location that allows them to accept or deny access.

Magic Links Login Authentication

Magic links require a user to enter an email address into the login box. An email is then sent with a link that requires clicking to log in. A user receives this magical link to ensure safety whenever there’s a login.

The Benefits of Passwordless Authentication

Reduced Costs

Password management and storage require a lot of resources. Resetting passwords and frequently changing password storage laws are also costly. Passwordless authentication helps to remove long-term costs.

Stronger Cybersecurity Posture

Passwords no longer provide a stalwart defense as many people repeat them multiple times.

Once a password gets breached, leaked, or stolen, it’s much easier for s hacker to gain access to your other applications. This allows malicious actors to then commit financial fraud or sell trade secrets to rival companies. Passwordless authentication takes care of these challenges by offering protection against the most prevalent cyberattacks.

Better User Experience and Greater Productivity

Users often have to generate and memorize multiple passwords, and because of this they sometimes forget them, forcing the task of then resetting them. For this reason, users use simple and uncomplicated passwords, Often using the same ones for numerous applications, with an addition of an extra character. The challenge here is that hackers find it easy to access these accounts.

Passwordless authentication eliminates these challenges, as users do not have to create or memorize their passwords. Instead, they only authenticate using emails, phones, or biometrics.

Scalability

Passwordless solutions work with technology and factors that end users already possess. Therefore, it becomes easier for mobile devices and laptops to infuse the various methods. Some passwordless authentication easily integrated includes biometrics and authenticator apps, Windows Hello, and fingerprints.

Top 10 Use Cases of Passwordless Authentication

Passwordless authentication can apply to a variety of use cases including:

• Customer payments authentication
• Remote logins
• Logins for financial services
• Call center authentication
• Personal logins
• Customer balance access
• Record access
• Mobile banking
• Wire transfers
• Push notifications

Changing the Security Paradigm: The Big Step

Businesses that integrate passwordless authentication have a strong concern for security. Organizations now realize that many security breaches result from the use of passwords. For them, the one-time cost of implementing passwordless authentication is more rewarding.

While it’s true that passwords are still quite common, the security risks are enough reason to make a switch. With the technology quickly gaining traction, there’s no better time to integrate passwordless authentication.

Indeed, passwordless authentication is the next digital breakthrough that offers key advantages over the traditional password including:

• It helps to lower costs while also increasing revenue. Customers tend to gravitate towards such products and services that provide trust and security.
• Providing a smooth user experience is preferrable to any customer.
• The presence of the technology and its adoption is a vital element for trusted security.

Nonetheless, passwordless authentication remains in its early stages. While many businesses have yet to adopt the technology, there’s a strong sentiment that its adoption will help change the face of security in the near-term.

A Software-Defined Wide Area Network (SD-WAN) enables organizations to rely on a combination of transport services. The increasing use of SD-WAN for connecting enterprise networks improves productivity, reduces cost, and increases application performance.  

It is a feature-packed technology that centralizes security, management, networking, and more. Consequently, organizations with cloud solutions view SD-WAN as an infrastructure upgrade to operations. 

Wrong Approaches

A frequent occurrence with businesses is the focus on individual technical elements. Unfortunately, many such enterprises fail to realize  the need to address end-to-end solutions. 

Selection should encompass all available approaches with the choice that best suits the company’s needs, budget, and savviness. Another aspect to  consider is the fact that IT teams often fixate on price. Unfortunately, most of them misinterpret prices, opting for cheaper options resulting in  poor network performance .  

Such 0rganizations often soon encounter issues with high latency, prolonged downtimes, less supportive service-level agreements, and more. As enticing as cost savings can appear, ensure it never poses serious risk to your network connectivity or SD-WAN designs. 

Responding to this Challenge:

• Ensure that all choices and approaches produce maximum results for the company’s network. 
• Consider platforms with built-in cloud and security vendor access for appliances. 
• Ensure to prioritize necessary performance features over novel ones. 
• Technology evolves at a rapid pace, so plan accordingly with future long-term growth in mind.

Overlooking the Quality of Service (QoS) Concept for SD-WAN

One attribute that should never get overlooked is the QoS. An equally important aspect is the quality of experience. However, SD-WAN service providers never seem to offer end-to-end prioritization. Although it provides an efficient traffic segmentation and path selection, traffic movement often gets delayed. Therefore, seeking an SD-WAN approach with ‘fail safe’ technology features is crucial. 

These options must offer superior performance to MPLS across all applications. MPLS itself comes with end-to-end QoS via six settings for service-level categories, though also with delayed traffic movement.  

Responding to this Challenge:

• Never compromise on the quality of service and quality of experience with network connectivity.  
• Be sure to purchase local site-by-site internet underlay with low-cost service that provides high QoS and QoE along with various available features.Consult with experts to get the best-customized recommendations. 

SD-WAN Security Requirements

Some SD-WAN technology lacks security capabilities. Unfortunately, these security lapses often open the door to cyber threats. 

 For instance, there’s usually an edge security change with SD-WAN features such as virtual private network (VPN) deployment. In other scenarios, data get transferred with every migration to cloud solutions. Therefore, deploying hardware and virtualized instances with accessed security policies still comes with risks. 

 Responding to this Challenge 

• Organizations should take time to research all vendor claims and ensure all security functions meet  company criteria. 
• Strategize the integration of cyber security and networking solutions instead of separating the two. 
• Make it a habit to add new layers of security systems where and when necessary. 
• Try integrating existing security with SD-WAN solutions. 

SD-WAN Management Issues

Today’s SD-WAN solutions help to blur the lines between DIY and the type of management structure in place. Organizations never get to pick the management level traditionally. One of the drawbacks of the SD-WAN model is that it breaks most businesses’ existing centralized security inspections.  

Organizations often build hub network architectures designed around the consolidation of data streams. The idea is to backhaul traffic through a centralized channel into data centers. Firewalls are used to create  single security inspection points  so that packets get examined before making it into the data center. The presence of an SD-WAN architecture makes this method ineffective. 

By default, SD-WAN solutions lack integrated security that allows routing all traffic through a full security stack for inspection. There’s also the task of threat prevention before proceeding to its destination. 

 With SD-WAN,  lots of traffic moves outside the data center perimeter. As such, connections to the cloud from external sources like remote workers never go through the traditional inspection process. 

The outcome for organizations is a forced decision. They have the choice of forgoing the benefits of SD-WAN by backhauling traffic to the data center for inspection, or simply not securing traffic on the WAN at all. 

Responding to this Challenge:

• Give the required training to the IT team and staff members  
• Get dedicated staff that can oversee the end-to-end SD-WAN implementation 
• Infuse post-implementation monitoring and management into the company’s activity. 

Cloud Connectivity Requirements

When it comes to selecting SD-WAN projects, vendors and the IT team require cloud connectivity to either AWS, Google, or Microsoft Azure. Therefore, SD-WAN vendors typically belong to one of three categories based on their cloud access capabilities. 

• Native Cloud Access: This category includes built-in access to the vendor’s SD-WAN architecture . It involves using the cloud’s backbone infrastructure for connecting to branch office sites. For vendors that adopt the cloud as a global backbone, this is an everyday occurrence. However, this option is better for connecting to  local cloud data centers since the deployment of cloud gateway architecture is a unique system. 
• Vendor Access Provision: This category entails vendors delivering SD-WAN appliances to a cloud environment through public gateways or private backbones. Such an option comes with more flexibility regarding  vendor features. Public gateways and private backbones route traffic more efficiently than the Internet. 
•  Customer Access Provision: Here the customer is responsible for deploying the appliances in the local cloud-based data center with this option. This option offers cloud access in a more ad hoc and  simplified architecture. 

Responding to this Challenge:

• Normalize analyzing deployment needs and internal application performance. 
• After implementation, monitor application performance. It ensures that the business takes timely actions and prevents any form of disruption. 
• It’s crucial to decide the bandwidth requirements and latency policies in a multi-cloud environment. An excellent way to achieve this is by evaluating service dependency on several micro-service segments.

These shortcomings aside, SD-WAN offers numerous benefits for organizations  looking to optimize and transform their corporate networks.

A data breach is something every individual and organization needs to avoid. Unfortunately, it has become all too common in today’s online world. One major way that personal information becomes compromised is through identity theft. It’s better not to imagine the extent of damage that goes along with that.

In this highly-connected world, cybersecurity is continuously increasing in scope and size.

For one, consumers want to conduct business with enterprises capable of keeping hackers away. As a result, it becomes necessary to put a response plan against data breaches. The question, therefore, is how do you prevent or respond to a data breach?

What is a Data Breach?

A data breach occurs when an organization suffers a security incident that affects the confidentiality, availability, or integrity of its data. Consequently, the rights and freedoms of individuals become compromised.

Data breaches strike every industry, sector, and individual. For individuals, the cost is often personal financial damage to investment funds, salaries, or savings. On the other hand, corporations often spend hundreds of thousands or millions in dollars to repair systems, improve defense, and more.

How Do Data Breaches Happen?

Compromised credentials are the most common method cyber attackers use to enter a database. The approach accounts for 20% of data breaches.

Most affected credentials include passwords and usernames obtained through a different security incident. Various attack methods come into play in these data breaches including brute-force attacks, megacart attacks, phishing and more. Also, a breach could result from an insider, negligence, and business email compromise (BEC).

For an inside threat, the attackers first conduct surveillance, then map out a network for the most valuable resources, before targeting a potential pathway to infiltrate the systems.

Financial motivations are the reason for most inside attacks. Some employees jump at it when they get tempting offers to make extra money. The outcome is your information changing hands.

Types of Data Breaches

A data breach is also great at ruining a brand and not just your revenue. For individual to remain safe, a knowledge of the common types of breaches is a must. You also need to know how it affects you. So, here is a list.

• Malware or Virus: The goal of this threat is to wipe information from a computer. For companies that heavily rely on data, this is always a heavy blow.
• Password Guessing: Stolen passwords all to often result in extreme damage. Passwords are typically hacked due to their simplicity and being easily guessable. Prime examples of this include Passwords derived from people’s names, pet names, or birthdays.
• Ransomware: As the name suggests, this occurs when you pay a ransom to regain access to your phone or computer.
• Phishing: Phishing involves the mirroring of a website with a fake duplicate that can highly resemble the original. When you unknowingly log into the site, the attackers steal your password to conduct their criminal activities.

How to Detect a Data Breach

As data breaches become inevitable, detection is becoming an increasingly important initiative. At this rate, cybersecurity has become an essential investment for individuals and organizations. We all need to understand who is vulnerable to data breaches and how to detect and respond to them.

Data breach detection is not always easy. It often involves an intelligent Data Security Platform, especially in the case of large companies. Their tools help to provide speed and precision when mitigating damages.

Nevertheless, there are always warning signs that indicate when your system has experienced a data breach. Here are red flags you need to the investigate:

• Sudden user account lockouts or password changes.
• Strange user activity such as logging in at irregular times from unknown locations.
• Unusual pop-ups, redirections, or changes to browser configuration.
• Unusual activity on network ports
• Strange messages from you by email or social media
• Strange configuration changes without an approval

Effects of Data Breaches

Irrespective of the size, a data breach can destroy a business. For example, 60% of small businesses often shut down within six months after an attack. These occurrences can stem from multiple factors including:

• Poisoned Corporate Brand: Data breaches have a way of tainting a business reputation –the effects of which can linger long after the incident.
• Loss of Sales: Reputational damage can lead to a loss of customers and sharp drops in revenue due to drops in customer trust.
• Loss of Intellectual Property: Intellectual property constitutes over 80 percent of a company’s value today. Losing intellectual property can threaten the future of the company and also leaves it vulnerable. In some instances, some competing businesses will even take advantage of stolen information for their own gain.

How to Develop a Data Breach Response Plan

Have an Incident Response Checklist
Having an incident response checklist for data breaches can provide guidance for what to do during breach scenarios. It contains an outlined task to carry out so that everyone knows what exactly to do. However, the checklist should be flexible to allow adjustments for evolving threats.

Be Informed about Laws and Regulations
Regular government policy changes are often a headache for SME businesses. Because of the rise in cybercrime, governments and agencies constantly change regulations on data protection. Be sure to keep tabs on these changes and adapt to new laws.

Review New Cyber Threats
Never take the news of a data breach for granted. It’s important to consistently review new security risks as these provide highly valuable insights.

Identify Data Security Platforms
In case of a security breach, contacting a forensic service provider is safe. They are highly skilled at investigating the cause and impact of an attack. It is best to have the contact for one beforehand rather than waiting for a crisis to find one.

Steps to Take After a Data Breach

1. Identify the Source and Extent of Damage
The first thing to do about any cyber attack is to identify the source. You also need to identify the type and the extent of the damage. It is a time-consuming process when operating without a prevention system.

2. Having an Intrusion Prevention System (IPS)
An IPS automatically logs the security event to you and tracks down the source and identify of the affected files when in use. You can also gain insight into the particular actions taken by the threat actor.

3. Inform your Forensic Service Provider
You need to have a structure in place for addressing security emergencies. If you have a team, have them to swing into action immediately. Remember your checklist and let them follow the procedure for resolving the issue. If it is an inside threat, revoke the account’s privileges and change the password. Should you not have an in-house team, inform your security service provider to tackle the problem.

4. Test your Security Fix
Once the issue gets resolved, implant a short-term security fix to prevent future occurrences. Don’t forget to also test any security fix to avoid attackers using the same method. Be sure to conduct the test on all computers and servers.

5. Inform Authorities and Affected Customers
Customers need to be informed about a breach of their personal data so they take personal measures to protect their identities such as canceling credit cards and setting up two-factor authentication if available. Informing customers requires three critical factors — time, information, and thoroughness. Be sure to communicate honestly and openly where necessary and provide steps of guides for them to protect themselves. In addition, contact authorities about the breach. The government and security agencies provide post-breach regulatory standards for every industry.

6. Prepare a Clean Up and Damage Control
The loss of customer confidence is another devastating effect of data breaches. They tend to be more cautious with any organization after a breach. When you fix all breach-related issues, quickly pivot and work on restoring public trust.

Final Thoughts on Data Breaches

There is no single method for responding to a data breach . Data breaches often require a case-by-case approach along with a thorough risk assessment to determine the best course of action. The extent of damage and nature of the breach will determine the precise steps needed. The response team may work with additional staff or external experts such as IT specialists/data forensics experts. While data breaches can undoubtedly be a nerve-wracking event, the first rule is always prevention, and having a sound response plan can help put the mind at ease.

It should come as no surprise that passwords have fallen out of favor as a reliable method of authentication. This is because passwords are often weak (easily guessable), can be forgotten, and password stores become a weak point for security (if an intruder accesses the password store, they hit the motherload). Luckily, there is a better way to reliably authenticate users – certificate-based authentication.

What Is Certificate-Based Authentication?

Certificate-based authentication is a cryptographic technique that uses a digital certificate to identify a user, device, or machine before granting access to specific resources.

Certificate-based authentication isn’t new. It’s widely used by many internet security protocols, including SSL/TLS, a near-universal protocol that encrypts communications between a client and server, typically web browsers and websites or applications. However, certificate-based authentication works slightly differently for SSL/TLS than in other use cases. With SSL/TLS, the server confirms its identity to the client machine, but this happens in reverse for client certificate-based authentication.

For example, let’s say a company wants to use certificate-based authentication to grant employees access to its email servers. In this scenario, the company will issue employees with valid certificates to access the email servers, and only employees with these certificates will be granted access.

In recent years, certificate-based authentication has risen in popularity as an alternative to password-based authentication, mainly as a way to address the security gaps with usernames and passwords. For example, username/password authentication uses only what the user knows (the password). In contrast, certificate-based authentication adds another layer of security by also using what the user has (the private cryptographic key).

With that said, it’s important to note that certificate-based authentication is rarely used as a replacement for usernames and passwords but instead used in conjunction with them. By using both, companies essentially achieve two-factor authentication without requiring any extra effort from the end user (getting out their cell phone to receive a one-time password (OTP), for example).

How Does Certificate-Based Authentication Work?

Before answering this question, we first have to understand what a digital certificate is. A digital certificate is an electronic password or file that proves the authenticity of a user, server, or device through cryptography and the public key infrastructure (PKI). PKI refers to tools leveraged to create and manage public keys for encryption. It’s built into all web browsers currently in use today, and organizations also use it to secure internal communications and connect devices securely.

The digital certificate file contains identifiable information about the certificate holder and a copy of the public key from the certificate holder. This identifiable information can be a user’s name, company, department, and the device’s IP address and serial number. When it comes to the public key, the key needs to be matched to a corresponding private key to verify it’s real.

So, how does this work in practice? First, the end user digitally signs a piece of data using their private key. This data and the user’s certificate then travel across the network. The destination server will then compare the signed data (protected with a private key) with the public key contained within the certificate. If the keys match, the server authenticates the user, and they’re free to access network resources.

Benefits of Certificate-Based Authentication

Digital certificates are widely used by organizations today and for many reasons. Let’s dive into why.

Boosted Security

Public key cryptography, also known as asymmetric encryption, is considered very secure. This is because all data encrypted with the public key can only be decrypted with the matching private key. So, when two parties communicate, the sender encrypts (scrambles) the data before sending it, and the receiver decrypts (unscrambles) the data after receiving it. The unscrambling can only happen if the keys match. And while in transit, the data remains scrambled and will appear as gibberish to a hacker.

Ease of Deployment & Use

Certificate-based solutions are easy to deploy and manage. They typically come with a cloud-based management platform that allows administrators to issue certificates to new employees with ease. The same is true for renewing or revoking certificates. Moreover, many solutions integrate with Active Directory, which makes the certificate issuing process even more straightforward.

They also don’t require any additional hardware, which isn’t the case for other authentication methods like biometrics or OTP tokens.

Lastly, certificate-based solutions are very user-friendly and require minimal end-user involvement. Users don’t have to expend additional effort to get this boosted level of security. This is crucial because adding friction to any security measures tends to frustrate users and can often lead to worse outcomes. We see this happen with passwords where users typically reuse passwords to ease the burden of remembering multiple highly secure phrases.

Natively Supported by Many Existing Enterprise Applications

Countless enterprise applications and networks natively support X.509 digital certificates – the typical format used in public key certificates. This means enterprises can get up and running with certificate-based authentication with just a few configuration tweaks.

Security Flaws of Certificate-Based Authentication

No solution is without its drawbacks, and the same is true for certificate-based authentication.

It’s much harder to crack a key than a password, but once cracked, the results are the same. If a key is compromised, cybersecurity goes out the window. Essentially, IT can’t distinguish between a hacker and a legitimate employee if the keys match. And this is precisely why certificate-based authentication should be used in coordination with other authentication and cybersecurity measures wherever possible.

Second, certificate-based authentication is only as strong as the digital certificate. Or in other words, the stronger the cryptographic algorithms used to create the certificates, the less likely an attacker can compromise them. For this reason, organizations must ensure that the certificate authority is reputable and trustworthy.

Final Thoughts on Certificate-Based Authentication

Certificate-based authentication can be an excellent addition to any organization’s cybersecurity stack. While it’s not without its drawbacks, the benefits outweigh the challenges. Certificate-based authentication allows only approved users and devices to access your network while keeping unauthorized users and rogue devices locked out.