Five Key Benefits of Risk-Based Authentication Solutions
In today’s increasingly digital world, enterprises face a variety of challenges as they seek ways to protect the data of their customers and business. We face a world where 68% of business owners feel the risk of cyber threats is increasing, and data breaches exposed over 22 billion records in 2021 alone. There is an increasing imperative for businesses to protect their private information and those of their customers, and risk-based authentication is one of the key ways many are responding.
Risk-based authentication is a system of user identity authentication that relies on non-static methods, meaning it looks at several factors to determine whether or not a user can access certain parts of your system. It is a way of ensuring the right people have access to the right resources. These authentication solutions give scores to users trying to access parts of your system to determine whether or not they can proceed, protecting crucial data while still offering a seamless experience for users.
There are many authentication benefits that a risk-based solution provides. Let’s look at five of the crucial advantages of risk-based authentication.
Configure Adaptive Policies
In every system, the importance of flexibility is paramount. Flexible authentication solutions ensure that your security systems can adjust to changes while providing a user-friendly experience that doesn’t unintentionally isolate your users. With a risk-based authentication system, businesses can configure adaptive policies that allow administrators to adapt to protect their network without needing a system overhaul or a massive time investment.
Adaptive security policies are a more dynamic form of protection that better adjust to different factors. A risk-based system evaluates crucial factors like access permissions, login attempts, geolocation, access device, and more. The system's response depends on pre-set policies that enterprises implement, including protective actions like multi-factor authentication or block access.
Adaptive security is a great way to identify threats early, assessing risks posed by different users due to various behavioral factors. Risk-based solutions are ideal preventative systems because they enable businesses to configure adaptive, flexible policies while automatically detecting and assessing behaviors that indicate threat levels.
Integrate with Your Security Stack
The average business has likely already invested significant money into its security systems. The global cybersecurity industry has a market size of roughly $160 billion, with many companies worldwide allocating significant portions of their budgets to security solutions. If an enterprise is going to implement a new authentication solution to its tech stack, it has to be capable of integrating with its existing security stack to ensure they are optimizing spending.
One of the key authentication benefits of risk-based solutions is that they can be integrated with an existing security stack for various workforce and customer usages. You don’t want to overhaul your entire authentication strategy, so implementing a solution that can complement existing structures will make a big difference.
Authentic solutions that use risk-based strategies can easily be added to an existing security stack to provide a more flexible, dynamic way of verifying identity and providing access. It is easy and efficient without the need for structural changes.
Close the Security Gap
With cybersecurity, companies are often forced to react quickly to change from moment to moment. Hackers and bots have grown incredibly adept at exploiting weaknesses in systems that businesses weren’t even aware of, so much of cybersecurity revolves around reacting to security gaps to develop protective measures. This makes the need for speed and flexibility incredibly important, but having a strong and adaptive line of defense will help close vulnerabilities businesses weren’t aware of.
Because of the adaptive and flexible nature of risk-based authentication solutions, enterprises can feel confident that they are implementing software that will help close key security gaps. The authentication benefits of risk-based solutions are that they apply a tiered approach, pulling data from several sources and using artificial intelligence to make decisions on the threat level of users.
Because these authentication systems are not rigid, they can help close security gaps by not taking a uniform approach to threats. Rather than forcing enterprises to react to exposed weaknesses, they can feel comfortable having a threat assessment and authentication system flexible enough to close key security gaps.
Eliminate Risk of Compromised Credentials
Compromised credentials pose a significant concern to enterprises and their networks. Compromised credentials occur when an unauthorized user gains access to the credentials of authorized users, which they can then use to access data and cause damage to businesses. Compromised credentials are one of the most common causes of data breaches and hacks, often due to phishing schemes. Phishing is the most prevalent form of cyberattacks, accounting for over 80% of security incidents.
Risk-based authentication is a way to combat the risks of compromised credentials. The authentication benefits of a risk-based system ensure that just because credentials are compromised doesn’t necessarily mean your business will be impacted. Risk-based authentication solutions do more than analyze the login credentials of a user. They look at their behavior on a page, their location, browser history, and more. The system then decides whether to allow them access or not.
This tiered way of analyzing traffic ensures that just because someone has valid login credentials doesn’t necessarily mean they can access your system. This helps eliminate the hazards of compromised credentials.
360-Degree Authentication Solutions
Authentication is not something that should be looked at as entirely straightforward. Just because a user has the right login information doesn’t necessarily mean they are not a threat. Cybersecurity and authentication should be looked at from a 360-degree perspective. To ensure safety, authentication should be considered a top-to-bottom approach where several user aspects are analyzed and weighted against each other, not just one.
Risk-based authentication allows enterprises to establish multi-step processes for users that the system deems risky and takes a more holistic view of system traffic. Risk-based systems analyze every possible aspect of the user trying to access the system and automatically assign a risk factor according to their information.
This drastically mitigates the risk of fraud, data leaks, and other cybersecurity threats, as a more well-rounded, 360-degree approach provides valuable authentication benefits. Risk-based authentication is an impactful way to keep suspicious users away and ensure legitimate users have seamless access to resources.
