Authentication

The current best-practice advice for passwords is that you shouldn’t even know your password, and you should use a separate password for each of your online accounts. You can accomplish these goals today by using a cloud-based password management solution such as LastPass or 1Password to auto-generate pseudo-random passwords for each account.

We all know the saying, “You’re only as strong as your weakest link.” It can apply to cybersecurity in countless ways, which is one reason why designing a secure infrastructure requires expertise and the right tools. It only takes one employee to fall for a phishing scam, or one stolen set of credentials to potentially open the door to an attack. And it only takes one vulnerability in an otherwise great authentication workflow to do the same.

Passwords remain a critical part of corporate security, but are vilified by IT experts as one of the weakest links in the defensive chain. That’s because users tend to pick common words and phrases to streamline the login process, opening the door for cybercriminals.

While contextual authentication is seen as complementary to active and explicit authentication factors today, Ping Identity expects things to change in the future. We see contextual authentication becoming the norm and explicit authentication used less frequently.

Google has taken the next big step forward in its war against the password – an open source system to instantly and securely log you into apps on your phone using your password manager.

Google will begin testing an alternative to passwords next month, in a move that could do away with complicated logins for good.

Google is partnering with password management service Dashlane to build what they’re calling Open YOLO, a new API that will allow Android apps to securely access your login credentials to sign you in without any fuss.

Digital identity and authentication technologies are currently undergoing some major changes. Once the realm of centralized authorities like large enterprises and governments, new technologies are putting more power in the hands of end users in ways never before possible. Today’s technology stack is built on the lessons of the past, with an understanding of what works and what does not in the real world with real users.

Amazon’s “Selfie Authentication” allows the site’s customers to user facial recognition to authenticate themselves to the website in order to make a purchase. While not entirely unique, the recent announcement by the retail giant was huge because of its implication to users and to authentication.