Improving identity and access management has to be a top priority in any security strategy. Managing identity and access to secure accounts has never been more important for organizations. Employees now have hundreds of accounts to manage, and with the rise of SaaS applications for business processes, each account can hold vast quantities of sensitive company and customer data.
Usernames and passwords alone are not strong enough verification methods to protect this data. This is especially true when many employees use weak and unsecure passwords. Couple this with a rise in phishing attacks which aim to steal account details, and you have a recipe for businesses needing to implement much stronger security on their accounts. For many businesses, this has meant implementing multifactor authentication (MFA) across their accounts.
But in recent years, a new form of multi-factor authentication, ‘Adaptive Authentication’ has become increasingly integrated with identity and access management platforms. Many vendors have argued that adaptive authentication is the best approach to protecting accounts and ensuring that data can only be accessed by the right users.
So, businesses considering implementing MFA for their accounts may be wondering if adaptive authentication is the best approach to securing their accounts, or if two-factor authentication is enough. In this article we’ll explore these issues, how authentication works, the benefits of both multi-factor and adaptive authentication, and what the best identity management approach is to protect your users and data.
What is Adaptive Authentication?
Adaptive Authentication is a flexible method of deploying 2FA or MFA that allows different security ‘factors’ to be used depending on a user’s risk factors and tendencies. Adaptive Authentication platforms mean that the right authentication factors are used for the right users, adapting the type of authentication to the scenario.
Practically, this means that the right level of authentication is applied to the right users. For low risk users, this means that when they log into an account, they may just have to use 2FA with an SMS code sent to their phone. But for high risk users, they would need to use a biometric scan to log into the same account. This improves security by making sure that high risk users and accounts have the right level of adaptable, flexible security.
Adaptive Authentication is far more intelligent than traditional MFA. It can respond to the device that login attempts are made from, the IP address and the location of login attempts, so that it can identify when a login attempt is high-risk, and therefore implement stronger authentication controls.
How does Adaptive Authentication Work?
The main purpose of adaptive authentication is to adapt the security measures on the account to the risk-level of the user. User risk levels are governed in three ways:
1) Behavioral Learning
Over time, Adaptive Authentication solutions learns the typical behaviors of individual users to determine what their normal range of behaviors are. This includes learning the usual resources users’ access, and their normal locations, IP-addresses, times and devices used for logins. This means that the security measures in place can adapt over time.
For example, if someone who normally logs-in to an account in their office in London, suddenly tries logging in from an unknown IP-address in Colorado, the Adaptive Authentication will register this as being a potential account compromise attempt, and ask for multiple methods of verification.
2) Granular Admin Policies
Adaptive Authentication platforms provide granular admin policies that allow security teams to define risk levels based on the role, location, time, account or resource being accessed and more. This control is a major benefit over traditional 2FA and MFA.
3) Behavioral Learning and Granular Admin Policies
The best Adaptive Authentication solutions will combine behavioral learning with granular admin policies to create a mixture of dynamic policies that are fine-tuned to each user, and static policies that are guaranteed to protect important accounts and high-risk employees.
Is Adaptive Authentication the Best Authentication Approach?
Adaptive Authentication has many benefits over traditional MFA. MFA and 2FA has been described as a ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach, in that low-risk, routine events still require authentication, while high-risk events don’t have any additional security measures in place.
Adaptive Authentication solves this, by ensuring that routine low-risk logins are streamlined and simplified to save users time, while high-risk logins have extra layers of security in place to protect accounts and data.
Using Adaptive Authentication represents a more intelligent approach to identity management, using behaviors to better manage ease of access to our accounts, without compromising on the security measures that are so crucial to protect data.
However, it’s important to note that Adaptive Authentication isn’t perfect, and having MFA or 2FA in place is still a strong step in implementing security measures, especially if there are no extra layers of account security at all.
Many vendors suggest that Adaptive Authentication is the best method to protect your accounts and users. This infographic from Identity Management vendor LastPass details 10 reasons why you need Adaptive Authentication over 2FA:
Summary
Adaptive Authentication provides a more intelligent approach to managing identity and access. By using a mixture of behavioral analytics and granular admin policies, Adaptive Authentication provides a security approach that enhances the user experience. It makes low-risk accounts easier to access, while making high-risk accounts and users much more secure.
Many organizations implement Adaptive Authentication as part of a holistic Identity and Access Management solution. This normally combines Business Password Management, Adaptive Multifactor Authentication and Single Sign-On across all of their business accounts.
If you want to find out more about Adaptive Authentication, you can read customer reviews of all of the top MFA solutions
