With the continuously evolving state of cyberattacks, securing your accounts and data stored online is a must. That's why many of the online tools and services you use rely on multi-factor authentication (MFA) to make sure that only you have access to your information. Multi-factor authentication offers security layers beyond login credentials by requiring extra identity verification through your phone, email, or other means.
As an organization administrator, it can be challenging to incorporate multi-factor authentication into your security strategy. Finding the right MFA solution can be costly, and the setup process is often tedious. However, the vulnerabilities you cut down on by implementing multi-factor authentication make it well worth the hassle. In this article, we'll discuss multi-factor authentication and what you should consider in order to implement MFA successfully in your organization.
Why Use Multi-Factor Authentication?
Before we get into the implementation process, let's touch on a few important reasons for using multi-factor authentication. This will help you understand what issues need to be addressed by adopting MFA.
- Credentials are Vulnerable: A username and password alone won’t cut it for account security anymore. Many login credentials can be obtained by bad actors via methods like phishing, brute force attacks, and more. Even if you’re careful about your information, a data breach could leak your credentials along with many others’, leaving you vulnerable without MFA.
- Secure From Most Locations: More now than ever, employees working remotely will log in from locations outside of their organization’s network. Multi-factor authentication will help separate actual employees from bad actors who are trying to gain access to your systems. With MFA in place to verify their identity, employees won’t run into issues when trying to log in from outside the office.
- Time-Saving Security: Hardware tokens and other forms of identity authentication that offer similar or greater security are far less user-friendly and often take more time to go through the verification process. Multi-factor authentication shines because it provides a secure avenue for logins that’s easy to navigate and provides quick verification.
- Standards Compliance: Many cybersecurity standards and specifications mention or mandate multi-factor authentication in their security procedures. Multi-factor authentication is included in the General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) for the EU, and is also mentioned in the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards (PCI-DSS). Many other security standards recommend multi-factor authentication as a failsafe for identity authentication.
Implementing Multi-Factor Authentication
Now that we've gone over a few reasons for adopting multi-factor authentication, let's go over some important practices for implementing MFA in your organization. Most of these are important considerations for cybersecurity, even beyond identity authentication and MFA. Following this process in order will do wonders for your organization's data security.
Rethink Your Security Strategy
In order to understand how MFA can be used by your organization, you'll need to evaluate the security policies in place and how a multi-factor authentication solution could fit in effectively. Consider the following:
- What applications or data need to be protected? Generally, who has access?
- What does the organization have in place to protect digital assets?
- What does the current identity authentication process look like? How would MFA change this?
- What has been targeted by attacks or breaches previously? Is there a weak point?
Taking these things into account will help you identify vulnerabilities and understand where your organization would benefit from an MFA solution. You'll also get an idea for your organization's top priorities when it comes to system security.
Set Goals and Revamp Policies
Based on what needs to be improved upon or protected, you can then define objectives for where to implement multi-factor authentication and what it will replace. Make note of the systems or cloud applications that will need to have their identity authentication process updated.
At this point, it's also a good idea to brainstorm what identity authentication methods would work with your organization. For instance, you may not want to use SMS if your organization handles sensitive data frequently because it's an exploitable two-factor authentication method. An authentication app or biometrics would be a safer bet for MFA measures. Lastly, consider who will need to use MFA with your organization, whether that's administrators, third-party clients or vendors, or everyone that tries to gain access. Consulting with cybersecurity experts is recommended to understand how and where your organization could benefit from using MFA.
Choose the Right MFA Solution
There are numerous MFA tools available for use by organizations of any kind. Google Authenticator, Okta, Duo, and Auth0 are a few solutions that might be familiar to you. Important key features to look for in MFA solutions include easy integration, quality analytics, support for various kinds of identity authentication, scalability, and versatile device compatibility.
If your organization builds and runs cloud-based applications in ASP.NET Core, Duende Software's IdentityServer provides a powerful implementation of OpenID Connect, OAuth 2.0, and integration with ASP.NET Core Identity to help you set up an identity authentication process for your digital assets. Consumer authentication solutions often lack flexibility, which is where IdentityServer excels. Duende Software provides power and creative control to cloud-based applications looking to create security solutions.
Stress Test and Train
Before you implement an MFA solution across your entire organization, run some tests to make sure it'll function as intended. Here are some suggestions for ensuring that a multi-factor authentication framework will work for your organization:
- Pick a few employees with varied technical experience and see how well they can each use MFA to log in to appropriate systems. Get some feedback on ease of use, response time, and other factors.
- Test the MFA solution with different devices, both within and outside of your organization's network. Does it work successfully as an identity authentication tool on your phone? What problems do you encounter?
- Have an employee pose as a "bad actor" and see if they can gain unauthorized access by manipulating the identity authentication process. This will provide insight into how well the MFA solution can resist attacks and outside exploitation.
It's also important to familiarize your organization's employees with the MFA solution at this time. Help team members understand why the organization is using MFA and educate people on top-notch cybersecurity practices. It's also important to give instructions for navigating the MFA verification process and provide support if anyone is encountering issues. This will help your organization acclimate to the use of multi-factor authentication and minimize any new risks that could arise.
Roll Out and Review
Next, deploy the multi-factor authentication solution. Some companies will make sure MFA becomes mandatory immediately, while others use a more gradual and hierarchical rollout by starting with high-clearance login implementation and working their way down to general employee login attempts.
Security may be a top priority, but just because you require MFA for every login all at once doesn't automatically make a quick rollout the better choice. It's much easier to review performance and troubleshoot if you roll out an MFA solution in phases. You'll be cutting down on vulnerabilities and ensuring you won't have to address many leaks that spring up all at once by doing so. Regardless of how you deploy it, pay attention to the way your MFA solution meshes with the organization's existing user identity infrastructure.
Plan for Issues and Updates
Make sure to have a strategy in place in case something goes wrong in the future. A device used to verify an employee's login could be lost or stolen, for instance, so it would help to have a plan for account recovery. In case of a data breach, have a contingency plan with your MFA solution for damage control and emergencies.
It’s just as important to stay updated on the best cybersecurity practices to ensure that your MFA solution meets standards and is protecting your employees and users effectively. Regularly implement checks and updates to software and security infrastructure so that your MFA tool can work properly. It might even help to run more stress tests down the line to ensure its longevity. This way, you’ll get the most out of multi-factor authentication, and you can rest assured that your organization is properly protected.