Multi-Factor Authentication – A Much Needed Safety Net Against Cyber attacks

2021 is the dawn of a new decade, with the new decade the Indian tech industry is ready to witness a revolutionary change surrounding various factors and one of the most important factors that is to undergo this change is ‘Cybersecurity’. This change is validated with the continuous emergence of reports on the increasing number of cyberattacks against India’s government agencies, private organizations and individual users. According to a report by Kaspersky, India witnessed 36 million cyberattacks between January and November 2020, whereas the number of attacks in 2019 for the same months was 18 million. This only emphasises the need for a better cybersecurity measure to be brought in to keep the data safe from cyberattacks. Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) is one of the best ways to keep threat actors at bay.

“In 2020, many organizations had to do a complete overhaul of their cybersecurity measure, a few other organizations had to rejig their security features, especially with remote working culture coming into the picture. All of this leads to one problem – IT Complexity. The best solution for IT administrators is to provide easy safety access for employees who are remotely logging in. Using Array’s AG Series Secure Access Gateways, organizations can provide tokenless, secure and easy-to-use Multi-Factor Authentication. Through interoperability with 3rd party dual and MFA solutions, the AG Series adds an additional layer of defense against unauthorized access and misuse of data and applications. Using this, administrators can adapt the level of support needed using contextual information, such as login behavior patterns, geo-location and type of login system being accessed,” says Shibu Paul, Vice President – International Sales at Array Networks.

Many a time threat actors find it easy to breach the security set up by IT administrators due to the loopholes that come into existence as a result of complex cybersecurity setup. If MFA is provided at the user end, there will be an additional security that will help the users prevent any sort of breach from their end. This will in-turn help in avoiding identity theft, use of stolen credentials, avoiding data breaches due to malicious attacks and so on. While firewalls and antivirus solutions keep the systems safe via backdoor entry, it’s MFA that guards the front doors.

As per Global Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) market report, the MFA market revenue which was $8,967 Mn in 2019 is estimated to reach $16,105 Mn in 2025, with a CAGR of 10.25% during 2020-2025, thus showcasing the opportunity and the demand MFA is set to rise in the next five years. This leads to the question of why now more than ever MFA is of importance. MFA is easy to implement and is considered an inexpensive security add-on by IT administrators. It is considered beneficial as it will enhance the organization’s security by requiring users to identify themselves by more than a username and password. Using MFA an organization can achieve compliance, increase flexibility and productivity by bringing-in stability with streamlining login process and it complies with Single Sign-On (SSO) solution. While providing cybersecurity is now a complex matter since the threats posed by the actors is equally proportional in complexity, a simple add-on such as Multi-Factor Authentication helps take users and organizations one step closer towards keeping the data safe.