Multi-Factor Authentication Adapts to Evolving Cyber Threats in Enterprise

Evolving cyber threats contribute to hundreds of millions of dollars in losses for businesses each year due to compromised credentials and data breaches. ABI Research forecasts the enterprise segment of the Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) market will cross $1 billion this year as the industry sets its sight on bridging the security gap between employee authentication and corporate system security.

“Enterprises are finally realizing that they should not view MFA as a luxury security technology, one only for IT personnel, managers, and C-Level executives,” says Dimitrios Pavlakis, Industry Analyst at ABI Research. “With the BYOD culture in enterprises, it is becoming a necessity for businesses to deploy newer authentication technologies to fight detection-resistant malware, phishing attacks, credential theft, rootkit deployments, cross site scripting, and other threats.”

While promising authentication technologies, like geo-location, biometrics, tamper-resistant password tokens, device ID, and application credential management, are increasingly brought into the spotlight to fight cyberattacks in corporate settings, the ecosystem is evolving. The landscape now incorporates newly developed algorithms for dynamic authentication, probability heuristics, single-sign-on (SSO), and user devices as part of a unified MFA umbrella.

“The employee-praised BYOD culture is finally meeting the challenges of modern MFA in the workplace,” concludes Pavlakis. “Ensuring workplace authentication while taking into account device mobility, protection from cyber threats, insecure employee practices, and the desire to implement SSO on a wider scale, are just some challenges that enterprises now face.”

To help businesses proactively circumvent and counter cyber threats, software and hardware vendors are intensifying their efforts to address employee mobility issues, sharpening security for their products, and maintaining interoperability levels across devices, operating systems, and software platforms. Established companies like Centrify, Intel, RSA, Symantec, and Vasco, along with new promising entrants like Iovation, LaunchKey, and Yubico are active in this space.   

These findings are from ABI Research’s Multi-Factor Authentication. This report is part of the company’s Digital Security and Enterprise IT & OT Convergence sectors, which includes research, data, and analyst insights.