Executives Look for Business Value in Multifactor Authentication

Convincing upper management to extend your company's business value by employing strong, multifactor security takes effort, explained Andras Cser, a Forrester security analyst, in the webcast "Adding Business Value to Multifactor Authentication."

Access management has evolved significantly since the 1990s, when each application typically had a separate way to secure access. Increasingly, access trails are auditable and policies can be managed with fewer products. The ideal for enterprise-scale organizations, though, would be to use a single product for all access, and that trend is just emerging, Cser said. The market for identity and access management (IAM) solutions will grow to address business and consumer security requirements, and the value of IAM solutions will grow with it.

Market growth

Forrester predicts that the U.S. IAM market will grow from $3 billion in 2006 to $13 billion in 2014, bringing the service close to par with licensing. However, the cost of IAM services will fall.

In addition, as the market matures, the products and services offered will provide more ease-of-use administrative features that will decrease their setup complexity and allow them to interface with more applications and other services. This means administrative processes such as user account provisioning and policy and password management will cost companies less and make desktops more secure.

Business and consumer concerns

One of the bigger concerns for organizations is how to implement strong, multifactor authentication without causing users to revolt. Keeping access easy for both business users and consumers is necessary to keep strong security transparent to users, Cser explained. He sees that software and tokens will morph together in future solutions.

Another concern is that organizations are tired of single-point solutions and will want to consolidate their relationships with as few vendors as possible. Also, organizations are now looking for authentication that works well but is not on the cutting edge of technology, which may contain too many unknown, potentially dangerous factors.

Nevertheless, new markets are warming to multifactor authentication, including higher education, government agencies, business-to-consumer (B2C) and business-to-business (B2B). Vendors that want to enter these markets will need their products and services to work with other services and most applications.

Value as important as security

The value of IAM to senior managers, according to Cser, is simplifying the processes — making it possible for employees to work even when they've lost a token or password by using multiple means of authentication that overlap and help identify the individual. Cser believes that any pilot program should focus on the user if the program is to succeed.

Arcot's Doc Vaidhyanathan summarized the Webinar by explaining that Arcot is enhancing the value of authentication because its products serve B2B, B2C and enterprise markets and provide licensed, SaaS, and multiple-device support.

Learn more

If you missed this hour-long Webinar, you can watch the archived presentation at http://searchcrm.bitpipe.com/detail/ RES/1215005932_991.html. Call us at 1-866-99-ARCOT to learn the value of authentication for your company.