MFA For Cloud Apps

Often referred to as two-factor authentication (or 2FA), cloud multi-factor authentication is a critical and vital tool that fights against identity theft and unauthorized access to company resources. Multi-factor authentication adds a second or third factor to the login process on all your company resources including apps, services, servers, etc.

It is a secure way to verify user identity, which is more secure than the classic username-password authentication. MFA incorporates a password and 1-2 additional authentication factors.

MFA plays a crucial role Identity and Access Management (IAM), and is often implemented within Single-Sign-On (SSO) solution. In general, MFA may include any two of the following:

• Something that you know, e.g., a password.
• Something that you have, e.g., a device.
• Something that you are, e.g., your fingerprint.

Benefits of MFA For Cloud applications

MFA protect your user accounts and company data with a wide-array of MFA verification methods such as push notifications, Google Authenticator, phishing-resistant, and so on. Other benefits of MFA include:

• It protects sensitive information: Users are the primary risk for a network, so multi-factor authentication relieves user and IT administrators by protecting data from getting into the hands of relentless hackers.
• It is always secure: In case, a hacker has somehow acquired a user’s password to a system, they cannot gain access, as they won’t have the second factor (which is generally in the user’s possession.
• No more lost devices: Device-based multi-factor authentication (and paired with full-disk encryption) ensures that lost devices do not convert in to a compromised access or tempered data.

When implemented correctly, under the supervision of expert professional, multi-factor authentication can significantly benefit IT security without causing much challenges to the end-user.