Identification, authentication, and authorization – what’s the difference
Identification, authentication, and authorization. We all face these three concepts every day, but not everyone knows the difference. Since these terms are essential in data protection, they deserve to be explained better. To begin, let’s take an example from everyday life. It will help you to understand the difference between authentication and identification in general. A new employee comes to work for the first time. At the...
Biometric Authentication Pros and Cons
If someone steals your password, you can change it. But if someone steals your thumbprint, you can’t get a new thumb. The failure modes are very different. – Bruce Schneier The popularity and availability of information technologies are constantly increasing. And at the same time increases the number of threats associated with their use. The main one is the danger of critical information leakage – both personal and corporate....
Two-Factor Authentication 2015: Opportunities and Prospects
Modern technologies have brought a lot of conveniences and opportunities into our lives, but also sharply reduced the chances of complete privacy. Photos that are not intended for prying eyes, credit card numbers, passwords for accounts in social networks and e-mail services, business documents stored in cloud services, the hand of a hacker is able to reach all this with little to no effort. Traditionally one of the most vulnerable...
One-Time Passwords: Generation Algorithms and Overview of the Main Types of Tokens
The use of one-time passwords Amid the constantly growing online business segment, data protection has to be particularly reliable. If you still can ‘survive’ the hacking of your personal page on social networks (though it’s extremely unpleasant too), the loss of business information can lead not only to the loss of reputation and income but even to the closure of the company. One of the most defenseless points in the information...
Two-Factor Authentication with Background Noise: Is It Safe or Not
The term two-factor authentication is known for the majority of active users of the Internet. It is available on a variety of well-established websites conducting the work with the data of users: in social networks, email services, online banking. But unfortunately, not all the users use the benefits of this type of authentication. The most frequently this occurs because of some inconvenience with the standard 2FA procedure. The...
Out-of-Band Authentication
Out-of-band authentication (OOB) is one of the most popular types of two-factor authentication in the financial sector. It presupposes sending the one-time password to the user via a communication channel other than the main one, which is used for transactions on the Internet. Most often, during the OOB authentication, the OTP (One Time Password) is sent to the clients in the form of a text message via SMS or email and the company...