With digital transformation overtaking the world, ensuring data security and privacy has become even more essential. In the second quarter of 2022 alone, the world saw 52 million data breaches. Needless to say, ensuring data protection is more important than ever.
As technology grows smarter, so do cybercriminals. Risk-based authentication is a necessary component of combating cyber attacks.
What is risk-based authentication?
Also called adaptive authentication, risk-based authentication refers to a procedure that uses a user’s risk profile during customer identity verification and authentication. It enables strong authentication and ensures fewer chances of fraud or data breaches.
How does it work?
Risk-based authentication is based on the risk score of the users. Users with low-risk scores are allowed access to the site, while users with higher-risk scores are blocked. The risk score is assigned based on several factors, such as IP address and device.
The risk-based authentication solution does the following things to authenticate a user.
- Device: Check the delisting history of the device used by the user.
- Location: Check the user’s geolocation
- Network: Check whether the IP address of the user is familiar or unknown
- Sensitivity: Check what the user is trying to access. Is it sensitive information or something unimportant?
- Characteristics: Check whether the user has a relationship with the business.
The solution decides the next course of action based on the above points. The user can gain access to the site using their password or any other verification procedure.
Benefits of risk-based authentication for a business
Risk-based authentication has several benefits for both businesses and individuals. Some of them include the following:
Enhanced security
Risk-based authentication adds multiple layers of security to your data and allows you to protect it with the least possible inconvenience. The solution uses real-time data to make intelligent decisions with the help of artificial intelligence, behavioural data, and device data.
Compliance management
Data regulations are constantly updated all around the world. It can be hard for businesses to keep up with the ever-evolving compliances. Risk-based authentication solutions are developed keeping in mind this quick ability to manage compliances. With the help of artificial intelligence and machine learning, risk-based authentication solutions can adapt to changing regulations quickly.
Fraud prevention
As risk-based authentication considers several parameters, the chances of fraud decrease. The solution uses data from multiple sources to determine the authenticity of a user before letting them access the sensitive data, thus making it easier to prevent fraud.
Enhanced user experience
One may think that a multi-tiered solution may disrupt the user experience. However, risk-based authentication does the opposite. Not only is it good at its job, but it also enables a smooth user experience. Users face minimal intrusion and high levels of security. This is made possible because of the personalised rules the solution follows.
In the digital age, companies must protect their clients’ and customers’ data. Risk-based authentication is a highly sophisticated and useful technology that can help businesses ensure a seamless user experience and proper security.
