Gone are the days of face-to-face transactions where your favorite customer service representative took care of your needs the moment you set foot inside the door; gone are the days when cold, hard cash was used to pay for products and services; and gone are the days when we had to leave the comfort of home to buy what we needed. It’s an oxymoron no doubt, but the more we talk of social networking, blogs, wikis, Twitter, staying always in touch and opening up to relative strangers, the more behind closed doors we live. While it’s easy to go online and flaunt yourself, it’s not easy to judge that others doing the same are who they say they are. And the more visible you are online, the more open you are about your life and all its aspects, the more the likelihood of your identity being stolen and used for nefarious purposes. 

The high degree of anonymity that the Internet affords has made it necessary for service providers to concentrate their efforts on authenticating users and customers and their transaction details. From single-factor authentication which consists of using just a user id and a password to gain access, we’ve moved to more sophisticated forms such as two and multi-factor authentication systems. In these, there are three aspects that are used in some combination or the other to enforce security:

•    A physical token or device
•    A password or secret code
•    A biometric scan 

Known in the world of security as “something you have”, “something you know” and “something you are” respectively, these three aspects form the basis of multi-factor authentication. The last one being the hardest and costliest to effect, it’s in use in only applications that need the highest levels of security and authentication.

An ideal security solution must incorporate the following aspects:

•    Multiple layers of which authentication is one
•    Proper implementation
•    Customer acceptance
•    Reliability
•    Compatibility with existing systems
•    Scalability

No matter how secure and impenetrable authentication formats become, there’s always the possibility of hackers and identity thieves getting through using the weakest link – the human factor. Gullibility and greed work hand in hand to make phishing and other such scams successful and keep the conmen in business. And since a system is only as strong as its weakest link, unless human beings do their best to preserve the integrity of a system, even the best protection will not keep the crooks out.

 

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