Business leaders and IT professionals have a lot to deal with on a regular basis and enterprise security could potentially fall through the cracks as a result.  When it comes to enterprise security, it is not enough to have alarms or cameras around your office or even forcing your employees to change their passwords regularly. Since the beginning of the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, cyberattacks against businesses have seen a 300% increase. Now more than ever, businesses and the digital world are intertwined, which puts businesses at an even greater risk for cyberattacks.  Cybercriminals use varying tactics to search for vulnerabilities within an organization’s cybersecurity infrastructure. The need for greater preventative measures is now if businesses expect to successfully win the war against malicious cyber activity.  

Threats to enterprise security

Cybersecurity threats to businesses remain constant: phishing, malware, ransomware, and data breaches. However, the increased dependency on digital solutions and remote work has caused a heightened rate of these threats, leading to businesses suffering great financial losses. At the end of 2021, aggregate global data breach costs totaled $4.24 million—the highest in the past 17 years. IBM estimates that there was a $1.07 million increase to the average cost associated with a data breach occurrence. This can be attributed to the increase in remote work. The most recent projected figures by the Ponemon Institute report that a company’s average loss  to a phishing attack in 2021 was $14.8 million. That is more than triple what it was in 2015. The latest forecast for aggregate global ransomware damage costs in 2021 were an estimated $20 billion. Cybersecurity Venture predicts that there was a ransomware attack on businesses globally every 11 seconds in 2021.   

These rates are alarming, but all comes down to the mere fact that cybercriminals are constantly evolving and looking for weaknesses in your cybersecurity infrastructure. More often than not, this weakness can be attributed to human error. According to Verizon’s Data Breach Report, 95% of cybersecurity breaches result from human error and 85% involved vulnerability exploitation. 61% of these data breaches were the result of weak or stolen passwords. Passwords continue to be a costly security issue.  

Employees are tired of passwords

Nearly all IT professionals agree that passwords pose severe security risks to organizations. Between weak passwords, mishandling passwords and reusing them, passwords have proven to be a continuous challenge for IT professionals and employees. Keeping in mind that passwords are the gateway to confidential data, electronic financial transactions and more, it is sobering that we do not treat them with more care.   

According to Last Pass, the standard approach to password security in the workplace has failed and businesses are not responding to that failure quickly enough. For most people, the fear of forgetting a password outweighs the risk of hacking. In fact, 91% of people understand the risk of reusing passwords but 61% still reuse them. Changing passwords and password management are amongst the top frustrations for employees, coining the term password fatigue. Research shows that the average employee has to keep track of 191 passwords and because of this burden, employees rotate the same five passwords across their work and personal accounts.  This burden ultimately puts the business at risk for cybersecurity threats. In short, IT professionals and business leaders will have to combat password fatigue in order to keep their businesses protected.  

Reduce password fatigue with biometric technology

Multi-factor authentication can seem counterintuitive for reducing password fatigue. However, when paired with biometric technology the task can be conducted with ease.  Biometric multi-factor authentication works similarly to traditional multi-factor authentication, the only difference is one of the authentication methods is a biometric scan instead of a secret code. When employees attempt to access an enterprise application, they enter their usernames, and a notification is pushed to their registered mobile device. Device possession is the first test, and the second challenge is that the user must complete a biometric sample capture (i.e., fingerprint, facial, or voice recognition) to prove that they are the person authorized to use the device for login at the time of the login attempt.    

Solving the issue of password fatigue and password management should be top priority for IT professionals and business leaders. Research indicates that current password management conducted in the workplace is only leading to more problems and costing businesses millions of dollars a year. With biometric multi-factor authentication, employees will no longer have to worry about constantly changing their passwords. Additionally, IT professionals will be left with peace of mind due to the security benefits associated with biometric technology.  

For IT professionals and business leaders looking for a robust solution to meet their needs, Knomi® mobile biometric authentication framework from Aware is a great option. With Knomi®, companies can conduct document verification, liveness detection, and biometric facial matching to ID remotely. The framework is secure, flexible, and easy-to-use.   

For more information about the Knomi® mobile biometric authentication framework, please contact us below .  

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