16 Oct September 2020 update from our CEO
| Multifactor Authentication,the New Must for Businesses! Multifactor Authentication is nothing new in the world of IT security, but the landscape it protects has dramatically changed since its inception. In the early days, this technology was largely used to protect enterprise networks and their remote access. Typically, an employee would carry a physical token (fob) that generated one-time passwords to gain access to company assets. The technology worked well but the cost to implement and support physical tokens put multifactor authentication out of reach for most businesses, especially small businesses. Over the past 20 years, many new vendors have developed competing products and made the technology easier to support, lowering the cost of ownership and making multifactor authentication a product that all businesses can now afford. This is great news for businesses of all sizes because multifactor authentication is one of the single most important security technologies a company should use. Today’s computing landscape is quickly becoming a playground for hackers. With the rapid adoption of cloud infrastructure and the push for work-from-home during the COIVD-19 pandemic, businesses find themselves swimming with sharks at every turn. Microsoft 365 is one of the easiest targets. In 2020, over 70% of Microsoft 365 organizations suffered at least one compromised account each month. The most common risk exploited regularly by hackers is gaining access to an account through a compromised password. A password can be exposed through brute force or by tricking the user into revealing their password. Maliciously using a non-unique password, a password used at a compromised site at a different site is another popular hacker technique. These attacks are prevalent and increasing every day. The damage caused by an attack like this includes loss of business reputation, trade secrets, computing resources, and dollars. An attack’s financial impact usually gets the most attention. Unfortunately, we don’t see an end to this trend, but there are steps organizations can take to minimize this risk, like routine security awareness training for all staff, company adoption of a secure password vault, and the deployment of a multifactor authentication solution. It is critical to prevent yourself from being an easy target for hackers. |