What most people can’t see from the outside-in is the issue with security today: It’s not evolving quick enough. IT managers in every major university, institution and business are working around the clock to keep mortar between the bricks before they, too, become a part of the almost-weekly large-scale breaches that are common today. The fact is, there’s an incredible market for the personal information that clients entrust major brands with, and it’s up to those companies to secure their offerings with OneLogin’s all-in-one access mediation service.
OneLogin is a trusted multi-platform tool that can secure everything from apps, emails, texts, calls, databases and more with their flexible single sign-on (SSO) and multi-factor authentication (MFA) systems. While MFA is utilized in many business apps and portals to prevent impersonation and stolen credential access, these methods are neither as fine-grained nor as complete as OneLogin’s dedicated service. By narrowing all inbound access requests down to a single authentication gateway that requires multiple factors to be accessed, malicious entities are shut out for good.
Defining MFA
MFA is the process of using multiple methods to verify that an account belongs to the individual who’s trying to access it. This is an essential security step today and provides a nearly insurmountable stumbling block against unauthorized entities. What makes OneLogin’s implementation of it so effective is the synergy between MFA and SSO, which forces all inbound connections to enter through a single authentication portal before gaining access to any aspect of the database, devices, software or accounts on the other side.
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There are many forms that MFA can take. OneLogin lives up to its name by providing a service that truly requires only a single login using a one-time password (OTP) that circumvents redundant passwords or the repeated entry of a single, unchanging password that can be exploited. The OTP is acquired through SMS at the desired phone number or by using the free OneLogin Protect app, and additional steps such as security questions and security certifications can be added to protect the account from being compromised down the road.
How MFA From OneLogin Works
The array of MFA-driven services that OneLogin offers businesses and individuals alike cover the following:
- Database
Accessing vital data can be monitored and remotely approved or denied through OneLogin’s OTP app in addition to SecurID, RSA, Duo Security and other inbuilt features. This aims to combine SSO and MFA in a streamlined package that utterly shuts out all connections that haven’t been authorized first while keeping redundant passwords at a minimum.
- Software
OneLogin secures developed and distributed software with two-factor authentication or higher, protecting users who have registered with the service. This allows developers and IT professionals to rest easy with the knowledge that they haven’t inadvertently built exploits into their creation when they’ve trusted security experts to seal it up.
- Devices
Using a certificate that’s installed onto a desktop device, OneLogin verifies that the device is authorized to access personal accounts through an SSO authentication portal. The certificate itself is also checked upon access to ensure originality and validity, securing the computer system and the programs within without relying on multiple passwords or reentry of the same password multiple times.
By covering all possible ground with their security approaches, OneLogin ensures that personal accounts and corporate assets are fully secured with methods that can be trusted to verify the individual who’s gaining access.
Why It Matters
At the end of the day, there’s only one way to handle the aftermath of a critical breach, and that’s by moving large sums of money to repair damages to client quality of life, settle court cases and upgrade the soft- and hardware infrastructure to prevent repeat events. However, there’s no good reason to wait for a catastrophe first; these breaches happen more frequently than ever, and the costs start at six-figure values on the low end. It’s even more critical to consider OneLogin’s SSO and MFA packages for large companies that crutch on multiple third parties to meet front-end expectations.
One of the critical failures of our security infrastructure today is the reuse of old tricks over and over again, and the bad guys are apparently learning well from it because weekly breaches are a reality now. Credit card information and various bits of highly sensitive personal data are making their way into hands they don’t belong in, but it’s almost difficult to fault the companies or their IT managers. They are, after all, not prepared to deal with this. None of us were.
The Future of IT
The current direction of IT everywhere is a downward spiral, but there are sparks of hope to be found on the way. Before we get to that, we need to talk about where we stand right now. Statistically speaking, nearly half of the businesses that were polled in a recent study were found to rely on 25-200 third-party agencies and sometimes even more than that. These agencies were generally intended for field execution, quality assurance and maintenance; they formed the front line of every corporate office’s roots on the bottom level of the pyramid.
This is a necessary step in sustaining any large business because of the efficiency factor: Most corporate offices don’t, in fact, have the staff or the resources needed to succeed on that level. It makes more sense to hire other companies that pay employees a low wage to carry out these tasks instead.
Now, the problem with this setup is that it’s growing. As the business world becomes more and more complex, manufacturers are appending vendor services to their repertoire in hopes of maximizing their outlay as well as income. It’s not a situation that can be remedied because of the inherent logistics that are involved, and as such, it’s essential to make the most of the network that connects all these third parties to the client manufacturer. That’s before we even get to the point of how many jobs and services depend on these third parties in the first place.
Avoiding Security Pitfalls
However, there’s a massive security risk at hand here. When you combine the old security methods that are still in place with the multifarious arms and legs of manufacturers as represented by third parties, you now have countless inbound connections to the inner workings of databases, cloud servers, user profiles and so on that are normally supposed to be off-limits within the corporate hierarchy. That’s not to say that these doors are thrown wide open for anyone; it’s more that there’s little in the way of in-house security that can effectively cover all of these points.
What companies are doing about this is resorting to the multi-factor authentication (MFA) suite that’s offered by OneLogin, which is chock full of customization to safeguard any physical or data-based asset that can potentially be raided by malicious code-manipulators. They use a range of overlapping MFA techniques such as SMS confirmation of one-time passwords (OTPs), non-technical security questions, personal alerts in the free OneLogin Protect app and certification tags that can be downloaded to a mobile or desktop device in order to mark it as “verified” in OneLogin’s servers.
The combination of these MFA methods with a single sign-on (SSO) interface results in a smooth experience for legitimate users who are accessing the system with auto-checked credentials that pass the mark while intruders are faced with a barrage of checkpoints that are effectively impossible for them to pass. Since there are no other footholds into the protected domain than through this unified gateway, it’s extremely difficult for black-hat hackers and other entities to weasel their way in. The idea is that it’s difficult to find your footing on a perfectly smooth surface.
In Conclusion
Going forward, more businesses will likely have no choice but to resort to a mediation service such as OneLogin in order to completely secure the back-end from front-end access by unauthorized individuals. It’s quintessential that companies do everything they can in this day and age to guard their assets because of the market that’s out for stolen identities on the dark web. Fortunately, OneLogin isn’t just a one-hit wonder; their seasoned team of IT technicians continuously work to stay several steps ahead of the bad guys for everyone’s benefit.
