Identity security 101: How to drive trust and loyalty across the user journey
Identity is the connective tissue between every person and technology in your ecosystem. This connective role also places Identity at the center of your risk profile. It’s no surprise that Identity remains the No. 1 attack vector in today’s threat landscape — over 80% of data breaches involve some form of compromised Identity.
Properly addressing this fact means taking a serious and expansive look at your organization’s approach to Identity — because here’s the thing: Identity is more than just a login box. A rigorous, modern approach to Identity mitigates threats before, at, and after authentication.
Accordingly, technology leaders can’t limit themselves exclusively to Identity-related threats. They must also consider the impact their Identity solution has on core business priorities such as revenue, customer satisfaction, and growth goals.
This blog dives into how technology leaders can deliver Identity security solutions that also drive growth. If you’re curious about how to stay ahead of increasingly sophisticated attacks without putting your business goals at risk with excessive friction, this resource is for you.
It’s time to ditch dated Identity and excessive friction
Protecting customers from account takeover and other malicious actions is crucial. But when that protection creates frustrating stumbling blocks for customers, like passwords, frequent CAPTCHAs, and multi-factor authentication (MFA) fatigue, your business is at risk. By introducing excessive friction into customer journeys, good-faith security efforts built on legacy Identity methods can lead to abandoned customer journeys, lower conversion rates, and lost business.
It’s a raw deal, and the worst part is that Identity security that burdens your customers doesn’t necessarily translate to better security. For example, traditional usernames and passwords with SMS as a second factor are vulnerable to social engineering and SIM-swapping attacks.
The clock has run out on legacy Identity. It’s time to embrace a modern approach that leverages Identity as more than a login box and, instead, drives better security and better business.
Protect every stage of the customer journey
If the stats on pervasive Identity-related breaches teach us anything, it’s that legacy Identity simply isn’t enough in today’s threat landscape. Technology leaders need Identity security that can discover weaknesses, protect against vulnerabilities, and limit access if an adversary gets in.
In order to modernize security, you must modernize Identity. Okta’s layered defense strategy improves security before, at, and after the login box alongside a SecOps dashboard, tools, and integrations. Here’s how our Auth0 Identity platform drives stronger security, privacy, and user experience (UX) across the customer journey.
Before login
Bots make up 42% of all internet traffic today and 65% of these are bad bots.A versatile, scalable method for bad actors to carry out automated attacks, bots are also a major drain on your marketing budget. Whenever bots sign up for new accounts, they eat into your sign-up bonuses and block new connections with real customers.
Generative AI is poised to add gas to the bot fire: Between 2023 and 2030, AI adoption in cybercrime is expected to rise by 37%. Soon, businesses will be dealing with an even higher number of sophisticated bots capable of outsmarting simple bot-detection CAPTCHAs.
Modern Identity should stop bad bots in their tracks while maintaining customer-friendly experiences that protect revenue. Okta Bot Detection continuously monitors Identity threats across hundreds of millions of users, enabling us to detect bad bots and respond in real time with user-friendly challenges like the time-based authentication challenge. In addition, our Bot Detection solution now features a machine-learning model designed for signup attacks. Tailored models greatly improve detection and prevention of bots across the user journey, while reducing bot challenges presented to real customers.
OKTA SOLUTIONS TO EXPLORE FURTHER:
At login
Ultimately, driving your business forward comes down to providing customers with a simple and seamless user experience without compromising on security. Customers want on-demand convenience — fast, easy access with flexible login options — which means digital teams need to design phishing-resistant authentication experiences that also deliver a quick and easy customer journey.
Modern Identity can provide that perfect balance with flexible, secure passwordless login options. Passkeys allow users to log in quickly and securely, similar to how they unlock their mobile devices. They are also a phishing-resistant alternative to less user-friendly login options like the commonly used username and password plus MFA combination. Adaptive MFA can also reduce MFA fatigue by assessing risk signals such as a new device, network, or location, impossible travel, and untrusted IP, only triggering a second challenge for higher-risk authentication attempts.
In addition to login options, Okta offers layered security features for login. Okta Breached Password Detection and Credential Guard screen for and block compromised credentials. Okta’s Brute-Force Protection and Suspicious IP Throttling help prevent account takeover attacks that target single and multiple user accounts, respectively.
OKTA SOLUTIONS TO EXPLORE FURTHER:
- Single Sign-On
- Passwordless, Passkeys
- Multi-Factor Authentication
- Adaptive MFA
- Suspicious IP Throttling
- Breached Password Detection and Credential Guard
- Brute Force Protection
After login
The ongoing rise in post-login threats also necessitates a defense-in-depth, layered security approach at every step of the user journey. The stakes are high, and the pain caused by breaches has the potential for extensive reach. Breaches not only incur painful financial losses but also lead to substantial brand and compliance-related effects that threaten the core business. Modern Identity can help avoid these outcomes.
Modern Identity elevates security, privacy, and experience post-login to protect sensitive customer interactions and user sessions. For example, with Okta Highly Regulated Identity, configure your organization to send financial-grade contextual approval requests to customers’ devices for sensitive interactions like account updates or money transfers. With Okta Continuous Session Protection, your organization can also continuously monitor user sessions to detect and prevent hijacking attempts, revoke suspicious sessions, and set custom timeouts.
OKTA SOLUTIONS TO EXPLORE FURTHER:
SecOps
Security is a team sport, which is why Okta enables better collaboration between security, product teams, and developers with real-time insights and ready-made integrations that connect Okta functionality to a broader security apparatus.
For example, Okta’s Security Center helps organizations detect and respond to attacks faster and fine-tune their security posture with intelligent insights and custom threshold alerting for Identity-related events, anomalies, and general efficacy. Security Log Streaming further supports faster event response by allowing the streaming of relevant Customer Identity Cloud activity to third-party SIEM tooling.
OKTA SOLUTIONS TO EXPLORE FURTHER
The perfect blend of security and usability
It’s tempting to think of Identity as a box to be checked. Equip your customer-facing applications with SSO and MFA–check. It's time to dust off your hands and declare victory, right? If only it was that easy.
To adapt to the ever-shifting risks of the business landscape with equal attention to security and revenue, technology leaders need an approach to Identity-based security that also functions as a business driver. That means integrating secure, seamless Identity functions into your security and revenue strategies at each customer touchpoint.
Legacy approaches to Identity fall far short of this goal. But, by entrusting your organization’s Identity with a leader in modern Identity, you can position your business to lead the pack in customer Identity security and core business KPIs.
It all starts with Okta
Thousands of customers worldwide trust the Okta Customer Identity Cloud to strike the perfect balance of robust security and seamless customer experience across more than 10 billion monthly authentications.
We’ve invested in a layered defense strategy to improve security before, during, and after the login box — plus a dashboard and tools for SecOps that improve visibility and enable faster responses to potential and emerging threats.
Curious about how the Okta Customer Identity Cloud can help you build trust with your customers, secure your applications, and protect revenue? Reach out to our team to schedule a demo.
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