While businesses embark on a digital transformation journey, they no longer operate in isolation. Instead, they thrive on success by leveraging the true potential of partnerships, networks, and collaborations.

Regarding B2B success, enterprises can’t ignore the true potential of collaboration and growth since every partnership, whether for services or products, adds to the seamless integration of features and user experiences that aren’t everyone’s specialty.

In a nutshell, B2B collaboration for diverse aspects of security and user experience is swiftly becoming the need of the hour as more and more customers demand seamless yet secure experiences.

However, the success of these modern B2B collaborations undoubtedly hinges on two critical factors- secure partner access and effective partnership.

And here’s the crucial role of federated identity comes into play!

Let’s uncover the aspects of federated identity and learn how it’s shaping the future of effective B2B collaboration in the modern digital world.

The Changing Face of B2B Collaboration

B2B collaborations have come a long way from conventional partnerships to the hyper-connected digital world, often spanning geographical boundaries and encompassing diverse technologies.

Hence, this dynamic digital environment demands secure and efficient collaboration since greater connectivity increases the risk of cybersecurity threats and data breaches. Therefore, striking a perfect balance between openness and security must be a top priority for businesses engaged in B2B collaboration.

The Era of Interconnected Businesses

While every enterprise thinks about digitally transforming itself, it seeks multiple collaborations to develop integrated solutions that can address different challenges, offer seamless user experiences, and ensure robust security.

And for this hybridization to happen, business partners should be able to securely access sensitive information relevant to their domain without any hurdles.

Hence, the confidentiality and security of the data must be maintained through a robust access control mechanism. And to facilitate this, the crucial role of federated identity management solutions comes into play.

With federated identity management, enterprises can build a solid foundation of SAML standards that helps establish secure access between multiple platforms of different collaborated enterprises.

The Role of Federated Identity

With federated identity management, businesses can gain the potential to extend their identity and access management capabilities beyond their own boundaries.

This means they can securely share user identities and credentials across various partner organizations without requiring manual processes or duplicate storage.

Hence, this approach streamlines the onboarding and offboarding process of partners and eventually ensures that only authorized individuals gain access to sensitive data and information.

Let’s explore the unlimited business possibilities while leveraging the true potential of federated identity management.

#1. Robust Security

Security is the most important aspect of successful business collaboration in the ever-expanding modern digital world.

With a federated identity system in place, enterprises can implement a robust authentication mechanism, including multi-factor authentication, machine-to-machine authentication, etc., for all partner users.

This ensures multiple layers of authentication for safeguarding sensitive customer information and business data while collaborated parties are sharing it.

Apart from this, federated identity management allows centralized monitoring and auditing of various partner activities, which facilitates rapid threat detection and response.

#2. Effective Collaboration

Effective collaboration in the B2B landscape relies on seamless access to various shared resources, data, and applications. And federated identity management simplifies the entire process, providing partners with SSO capabilities.

This means that users authorized to access certain information or applications can access multiple systems and apps with a single set of credentials, thus reducing the friction of reentering passwords again and again for multiple platforms.

While most business collaborations fail due to poor access management, federated identity management is helping businesses deliver seamless and secure experiences across multiple platforms with streamlined access management.

This is undoubtedly why most enterprises are now inching toward adopting federated identity management to enhance productivity and user satisfaction among various partners.

#3. Role-Based Access Control

Federated identity can be fine-tuned to offer partners the right level of access based on their particular roles and responsibilities. This granular control assures that sensitive information is only accessible and available to those with the right to access it.

Organizations can maintain trust and build lasting relationships with their customers and partners by ensuring that resources and sensitive information can only be accessed by the ones who genuinely need it.

Enterprises can also enable access control within their organization to offer certain privileges to their employees in the higher hierarchy, thus enabling data privacy and confidentiality within their organization.

#4. Scalability and Efficiency

With federated identity, businesses can handle scalability in the B2B business landscape. As the business grows and forms new partnerships, the federated systems can easily accommodate new organizations and users without compromising on overall user experience and security.

This agility allows rapid expansion and scaling of collaborative efforts, offering a competitive edge in today’s dynamic business markets.

The modern cutting-edge solutions can handle multiple partners, and millions of users can leverage seamless authentication and data access without worrying about their overall security and privacy. Hence, most renowned brands have already been leveraging the true potential of federated identity systems for years.

#5. Streamlined Partner Onboarding

Apart from the security, privacy, and scalability capabilities, federated identity simplifies partner onboarding. This means partners can leverage their existing identity systems to onboard, reducing the time and effort required for setup.

When business partners collaborate, the only thing that matters is security coupled with robust security. However, the contemporary or legacy systems weren’t able to deliver a harmony of user experience and security.

In the case of federated identity management, enterprises can be assured that they can onboard as many partners and users as they wish. All this can be processed seamlessly without worrying about security, privacy, and overall user experience.

#6. Compliance and Auditing

While businesses put their best foot forward towards collaborating for overall growth, compliance with industry standards/regulations and data protection standards becomes non-negotiable.

Enterprises must understand that they must maintain compliance with all the global regulations, including the GDPR and CCPA if they’re serving customers across different countries and states.

And here’s where the essential role of federated identity management systems comes to the rescue. With federated identity, enterprises can adhere to various data privacy and security compliances. This ensures robust security as well as privacy for both customers and business partners since every aspect of data sharing is reinvented by precisely following the data security and privacy best practices.

Also, federated systems allow easy auditing for enterprises, enabling streamlined operations and processes.

#7. Cost Savings

Cost saving is undoubtedly a significant advantage of implementing federated identity management in B2B collaboration.

With federated identity management, organizations need to refrain from investing in managing multiple user identities or building their own single sign-on (SSO) solutions. This helps them in reducing their costs of development.

Apart from this, federated identity systems also allow collaborated partners to leverage their existing authentication infrastructure, saving time, resources, and costs, making federated identity a smart investment for collaborated businesses in the long run.

Future-Proofing B2B Collaboration

While every B2B business thinks about digital transformation through effective collaboration, federated identity is undoubtedly an overlooked yet essential aspect.

Whether it’s about managing a business’s security, privacy, or scalability, federated identity management covers all aspects of seamless yet secure access controls.

Hence, if a business is thinking of navigating its digital transformation journey, it can’t ignore the true potential of federated identity management to foster secure, effective, and future-proofed B2B collaboration.

The aforementioned aspects portray the endless possibilities and business advantages of leveraging federated identity management solution.

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In the past few years, enterprises like Amazon and Netflix have built robust brands and retained customers through continuous innovation and customer-centricity. This phenomenon has gradually raised consumer expectations in terms of how they interact with other businesses as well.

Adopting Customer Identity and Access Management (CIAM) practices in this paradigm shift can help even the most traditional enterprises, like utilities, become customer-centric and perform better. For example, by deploying efficient CIAM systems, utilities can centralize customer data for better insights, efficiently address concerns and service requests, protect customer data as per regulations, analyze consumption patterns, and protect customers against scams.

However, it may be convenient to reason that utilities around the globe are mostly monopolies and have little to no incentive to serve their customers like Amazon or Netflix do. While some utilities globally are monopolies in the markets they serve — for example, power suppliers in Los Angeles and New York City, power supply markets are competitive in cities like Hamburg, with multiple suppliers competing, and customers can seamlessly switch between suppliers.

Monopolies or not, customer-centricity is not just a competitive advantage but also delivers an operational edge for utilities. And CIAM helps put customers at the center of operational decisions and strategy.

Here, I discuss how CIAM can specifically help utilities.

Simplified User Experience

Utility customers today have numerous touchpoints to engage with various services. These touchpoints encompass multiple channels, including websites and mobile apps. However, ensuring a streamlined and secure user experience across these multi-channels can be challenging.

The imperative is to enhance convenience and potentially eliminate passwords, as passwords can be insecure due to specific circumstances. Utilities can leverage CIAM solutions to deploy friendly yet secure authentication methods, such as fully passwordless and semi-passwordless authentication — passkeys, email or SMS OTPs, or magic links — to eliminate the need for users to manage intricate passwords.

CIAM solutions also provide Single Sign-On (SSO) integration, which enables customers to log in just once and seamlessly access all relevant utility apps and services under one umbrella. As a result, customers no longer need to authenticate multiple times, making it simpler for them to access numerous services.

Robust Security Measures

Information security is a priority for utilities due to the high volume of personally identifiable user data they handle and the critical nature of their vast infrastructure.

According to the X-Force Threat Intelligence Index 2023, energy organizations faced a significant threat landscape, ranking as the fourth-most attacked industry in 2022. Furthermore, approximately 10.7% of observed cyberattacks targeted this sector, highlighting the persistent and growing risks the energy industry faces.

In general, Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report 2023 reveals that 74% of all breaches involve the human element, stemming from errors, privilege misuse, stolen credentials, or social engineering. Furthermore, an overwhelming 83% of breaches are perpetrated by external actors, with financial motivations driving 95% of these attacks. Attackers frequently exploit stolen credentials, resort to phishing techniques, and exploit vulnerabilities as primary avenues for breaching organizations.

CIAM systems help utilities against various threats at the authentication and authorization layers with built-in features like risk-based authentication, rate limiting, and intelligent IP address blocking to thwart attacks while ensuring seamless access for legitimate customers.

In addition, CIAM systems typically provide audit trails with detailed system activity to help understand any misuse or abuse. And they offer granular access controls so utilities can give apt access to employees specific to their jobs and minimize the attack surface for insider threats while ensuring that data remains encrypted at rest and in transit.

Better Customer Insights

A cornerstone of CIAM is emphasizing centralizing customer data generated across multiple services and touchpoints. It offers a comprehensive and consolidated view and management of customer data in a centralized dashboard, thereby eliminating data fragmentation and silos.

With this, utilities can analyze and gain insights into broader consumption patterns, customer trends, and preferences. This information can help improve marketing plans and better project revenue generation.

Enhanced Scalability

CIAM systems can handle enormous customer traffic with dynamic scaling capabilities, whether customers are logging in, raising service requests, or paying bills — this is also helpful when a utility is expanding its customer base or launching in new locations.

This scalability characteristic ensures that utilities can cater to the rising service demand without sacrificing performance or customer satisfaction. It enables utilities to confidently expand their customer base even more while upholding accessibility, privacy, and security for their customers.

Built-in Compliance Workflows

Utilities, depending on the nature of their services, have to adhere to some of the most stringent data protection regulations. While not all CIAM solutions offer comprehensive compliance management, some reputed solutions offer built-in workflows for regulations like GDPR, CCPA, NIST, and PCI DSS.

As CIAM systems excel in centralizing customer data, built-in workflows accelerate compliance management and mitigate regulatory risks more controllably while reducing the resources and costs required for regulatory compliance.

Conclusion

Considering the emerging threats and the massive customer base in the utility industry, embracing CIAM practices is no longer optional — it’s essential. By proactively adopting CIAM and acting decisively, utilities can position themselves to thrive in the digital landscape, offering their customers a safer and more seamless digital experience.

Featured Image Credit: Photo by Kelly; Pexels; Thank you!

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A robust and effective Identity and Access Management (IAM) system is necessary to guarantee the security and integrity of a business’s information assets. The security, integrity, and accessibility of sensitive data are, however, subject to a number of concerns that are associated with IAM. These risks include:

• Unauthorized access: Weak or compromised identity and access management can provide unauthorized users with access to sensitive data, leading to data breaches and theft.
  
• Insider threats: Users with authorized access to systems and data can intentionally or unintentionally misuse their access privileges, causing significant damage to the business.
  
• Lack of compliance: Businesses that violate IAM regulations risk facing monetary fines, legal repercussions, and harm to their brand.
  
• Cyberattacks: Cybercriminals frequently target identity and access management processes to gain access to sensitive data.

Given these possible vulnerabilities, it is highly essential for businesses to ensure the security of sensitive data and compliance with legal requirements. Having a strong CIAM system in place as well as routine risk evaluations, vulnerability checks, and penetration tests related to security operations, are some of the ways to control the risks associated with identity and access management practices. 

By addressing these risks proactively, businesses can prevent costly security breaches and protect their reputation. That being said, we will now delve into how a CIAM system can effectively manage potential risks involved in identity and access management practices.

CIAM – Briefly Explained

Identity and access management is frequently the initial “touch point” a business has with a potential customer and serves as a persistent representation of a brand. Getting IAM practices properly implemented can help businesses draw in customers, increase revenue, and represent the brand’s reputation in the best possible light. This is where Customer Identity and Access Management (CIAM) comes into play. 

CIAM is a vital framework that enables businesses to protect their customers’ identities and control their access to valuable resources like networks, systems, and apps.

In addition to security features like multi-factor authentication, customer data privacy, and regulatory compliance, CIAM capabilities include seamless customer registration, authentication, and authorization procedures.

Furthermore, CIAM streamlines and makes it simpler for customers to interact with applications while maintaining security and regulatory compliance. 

Best Practices to Manage Risks Associated with IAM

As previously discussed, businesses leverage identity and access management practices to make sure every step of their customer’s journey is smooth and secure and provides the experience they expect. But it has two sides to it.

Without a well-thought-out strategy, identity and access management practices can also cause conflict. Customers may stop using the brand if they find tasks like registration, logins, and updating preferences to be difficult or time-consuming. The key is to carefully and strategically use the power of CIAM solutions to any business’s advantage or favor. 

When done right, CIAM may lay the groundwork for the great customer experience (CX) needed to triumph in the wars for gaining customers, retaining them, generating revenue, and earning their trust.

So how do businesses leverage identity and access management practices effectively to get the most out of it? This question leads us to the next topic of how the CIAM solution can effectively manage risks associated with identity and access management operations. 

Risk 1: Compromising CX for Security

Adding more authentication layers, such as the standard email/password signup process combined with two or multi-factor authentication, ensures the highest level of protection for both customer and business resources. However, if such security measures have a detrimental effect on the customer experience and satisfaction.

Solution: The customer’s overall experience shapes their decision and is often what creates their first impressions of the brand. To manage friction and, at the same time, ensure security, businesses can use a top-tier CIAM system that effectively streamlines the customer journey right from the initial registration process. 

The CIAM system achieves this by eliminating password-based logins, enabling progressive profiling, and seamlessly integrating single sign-on (SSO) and risk-based authentication methods. Together, these comprehensive features of the CIAM system minimize friction while simultaneously boosting security to maximize the customer experience.

Risk 2 – Security Threats

Account takeover or data breach happens when an unauthorized person accesses a customer’s account and utilizes it for their personal gain, which is one of the major risks associated with identity and access management practices. This can entail carrying out fraudulent transactions, accessing private data, or altering account settings. Customers who have their accounts taken over may incur huge losses, and the business’s reputation could also deteriorate.

Solution: To manage the risk of account takeover and fraud, it is important to leverage an effective CIAM solution that enables businesses to implement strong authentication techniques like passwordless practices, step-up authentication, and risk-based authentication that detects and prevents suspicious login attempts. 

Therefore, having a robust CIAM framework in place for monitoring and identifying suspected fraudulent activity is crucial to prevent security threats. In fact, to swiftly identify and address any security events, it’s also crucial to have a strong incident response plan in place.

Risk 3: Privacy Concerns 

Another major risk associated with identity and access management operations is the potential for privacy concerns to arise. For customers to trust and support a business, they must have trust that their personal information is being handled responsibly, securely, and in accordance with privacy and regulatory laws.

If a business fails to adequately protect and manage customer data, customers may lose trust and choose to take their business elsewhere.

Solution: To lessen the risk of privacy concerns in identity and access management operations, businesses should place a high emphasis on transparency in their data gathering and management practices.

Customers should be able to decide who gets to see their information and how it is shared, and they must also have the choice to withdraw their consent at any point. This approach shows a commitment to protecting customer privacy and promoting transparency in data handling. 

To make sure that their identity and access management procedures are compliant with industry best practices and regulatory laws, businesses should evaluate and update them regularly.

In fact, the processes for regulatory compliance can be made simpler with a top-tier CIAM solution that automates audit reporting. It can also help develop the thorough reports required to demonstrate that the business strictly adheres to compliance.

Risk 4: Outdated System/Authentication Practices

To enhance security and the customer experience in identity and access management activities, it is necessary to modernize outdated security systems that still rely on traditional authentication methods.

The primary reason for this is that such obsolete practices are susceptible to security breaches due to outdated authentication protocols and a lack of timely updates to address newly discovered vulnerabilities.

In fact, out-of-date authentication methods, such as password-based practices, may provide a difficult user experience, lowering customer satisfaction and increasing customer retention rates.

Solution: Embracing a modern CIAM system can provide up-to-date authentication methods for businesses to incorporate as per their need. This can result in greater security, an improved customer experience, and increased operational efficiency, and can help mitigate the risks connected with outdated authentication methods. 

Through frequent security updates and fixes, a modern CIAM system can address security flaws, enhance customer experience and simplify secured access across various platforms.

A CIAM solution can also help address the security risks associated with outdated authentication practices by providing comprehensive, up-to-date authentication options like step-up authentication and risk-based authentication that prioritize both security and convenience for customers.

Wrapping Up

In order to effectively reduce risks and safeguard their IAM operations, businesses must continuously review their identity and access management strategies and processes. Also, it goes without saying that the overall security of the user and business data depends on its capacity to handle the dynamic difficulties or risks associated with IAM procedures. 

Therefore, businesses must evaluate the risks involved in each stage of an IAM operation to ensure readiness for potential problems or vulnerabilities. Businesses can also invest significantly in top-tier CIAM systems that are dependable, efficient, and compliant with industry standards. They can proactively ward off threats by doing this, fortifying themselves against new threats and vulnerabilities. 

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Customer identity security is essential to running a business in the digital age. With an increasing number of cyber-attacks and data breaches, businesses must be vigilant in protecting the identities of their customers.

With the rise of online transactions and the growing number of cyber threats, companies must understand the importance of securing their customers’ personal information and take appropriate measures to protect it.

Let’s discuss why customer identity security awareness is crucial for businesses and what they can do to ensure their customers’ information stays safe.

Importance of Protecting Personal Information

Identity theft can have severe and long-lasting consequences for individuals, including financial losses, damage to their credit score, and even legal issues.

Individuals must protect their personal information and be aware of the risks associated with sharing information online. This includes being cautious of phishing scams, using strong and unique passwords, and regularly monitoring their credit reports.

Apart from this, organizations are also responsible for protecting their customers’ information and implementing strong security measures to prevent data breaches.

This includes investing in cybersecurity solutions, regularly training employees on best practices, and conducting regular security audits to identify and address vulnerabilities.

Organizations must also be transparent with their customers about data breaches and what steps they are taking to protect their information.

Let’s uncover the aspects of identity security awareness training and why it’s becoming the need of the hour for businesses serving customers online.

1. Protecting Customer Information

The first and foremost reason customer identity security awareness is crucial is to protect the customers’ personal information. Personal information, such as names, addresses, phone numbers, email addresses, and payment information, are valuable assets for cybercriminals.

If this information falls into the wrong hands, it can lead to severe consequences, including identity theft, financial fraud, and reputational damage to the business.

Enterprises must emphasize using identity management tools that can ensure the highest level of security for

2. Maintaining Trust and Confidence

Customers trust businesses with their personal information, and it’s the company’s responsibility to protect this information. If a company experiences a data breach, customer trust and confidence in the business can be severely damaged.

This can result in long-term consequences for the business, including loss of customers, reduced revenue, and harm to the company’s reputation.

3. Complying with Regulations

Another reason why customer identity security awareness is crucial is that businesses must comply with various regulations and laws governing personal information handling.

For example, the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) requires businesses to protect personal data and report any data breaches to the relevant authorities. Failure to comply with these regulations can result in substantial fines and legal penalties.

4. Preventing Cyber Attacks

Cyberattacks are becoming increasingly common and sophisticated, and businesses must be prepared to defend against them. Cybercriminals can use various methods to access sensitive information, including phishing scams, malware, and social engineering attacks.

Businesses can reduce the risk of a successful cyberattack by being aware of these threats and taking appropriate measures to protect customer information.

5. Improving Customer Experience

Finally, customer identity security awareness can also improve the customer experience. When customers know that their personal information is being protected, they can have peace of mind when conducting transactions with the platform and would love to stay with the brand for longer.

So, what can organizations do to enhance their customers’ identity security awareness?

Tips to Improve Customers’ Identity Security Awareness

1. Stay Educated and Informed

Your customers are essential to your business, and you want to ensure they’re safe and protected. But how can you do that when so many new threats emerge daily?

It’s crucial to stay up-to-date on the latest threats and trends in cybersecurity, as well as regularly educate your customers and employees on best practices for protecting their information. You can read industry news and articles, attend webinars and training sessions, and stay informed about new security technologies.

As an enterprise, it’s your responsibility to ensure your customers constantly learn about the latest threats and vulnerabilities and are shielded against them.

2. The Use of Strong Passwords and Enable Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA)

The number of data breaches is rising exponentially. But what can you do to prevent those breaches in the first place and help secure your customer identities?

One of the most effective ways is using strong passwords and enabling multi-factor authentication (MFA). This can significantly enhance the security of your accounts and help prevent unauthorized access to your information and identity theft.

With MFA in place, enterprises can stay assured that even if one aspect of authentication, like passwords, is compromised, there’s another stringent mechanism to reinforce customer account security.

Educating your customers regarding strong passwords and your enterprise’s security posture and offering frequent training sessions to efficiently utilize the identity management tools can eventually be a game-changer in reinforcing your customers’ identity security awareness.

3. Educate Your Customers to Review Security Policies

When it comes to identity security, the threat landscape is quite broad. And a single mistake from your customers’ end could lead to severe consequences that may even hamper your brand reputation.

Hence, it’s always a great idea to educate your customers regarding the potential threats they may encounter while they browse on other platforms.

Here’s what needs to be done from your end to ensure robust customer identity security:

• Educate yourself about the importance of regularly reviewing privacy settings: Ask your customers to regularly review privacy settings on social media and other online accounts that can help prevent sensitive information from being shared with unauthorized individuals. This can include checking who can see personal information.
• Understand what sensitive information is: Ensure your customers are well aware of sensitive information, which includes their social security numbers, credit card numbers, health records, passwords, and even their mother’s maiden name. It is essential to keep this information safe because it can be used for identity theft or fraud.
• Identity protection: Identity protection involves keeping an eye out for suspicious activity in their name or an attempt to gain access to accounts that belong to them. This could include someone applying for credit cards in their name or attempting to access bank accounts linked to their social security number.

Why does Identity Security Awareness Matter Now More than Ever?

Today, personal information is being collected and stored by numerous organizations and businesses, from banks to social media platforms. This information can be vulnerable to theft and misuse if it falls into the wrong hands.

A lack of awareness about the importance of identity security can lead to customers not taking the necessary precautions to protect their personal information. This could result in financial loss, reputation damage, and even personal freedoms.

A lack of customer awareness of identity security can also have severe consequences for businesses. A data breach or cyber-attack can cause significant damage to a company’s reputation and financial stability.

Additionally, businesses are increasingly held responsible for protecting customer data and ensuring appropriate security measures are in place.

Therefore, businesses must educate their customers about the importance of identity security and what they can do to protect themselves.

Businesses can also offer identity management tools and resources to help customers secure their identities, such as identity theft protection services.

To Conclude

Identity security is an important aspect of modern life, particularly in the digital age. It refers to the measures and techniques used to protect an individual’s personal and sensitive information from unauthorized access, theft, and abuse.

However, despite its significance, many customers may not be aware of the importance of identity security and the consequences of neglecting it.

In a nutshell, identity security is a crucial aspect of modern life, and customers must be made aware of its importance. Neglecting identity security can lead to significant consequences for both individuals and businesses. Businesses must educate their customers about the importance of identity security and provide them with the necessary tools and resources to protect themselves.

Featured Image Credit: Photo by Mikhail Nilov; Pexels; Thank you!

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Mobile app developers must ensure that the mobile app is effortless while keeping internal information protected and secure. Complex or repeated authentications can be frustrating for your mobile app users.

This article discusses various means of simple and secure mobile authentication, ensuring frictionless UI and UX of mobile authentication screens and data security.

What is Mobile Authentication?

Mobile authentication is a security method to verify a user’s identity through mobile devices and mobile apps. It caters to one or more authentication methods to provide secure access to any particular app, resource, or service.

Let’s look at the various mobile authentication methods developers can utilize depending on their business use case.

Mobile Authentication Methods

Password-based Authentication

Email-Password and Username-Password are common types of password-based authentication. While utilizing these methods, developers should consider setting secure and robust password policies in their authentication mechanism, such as:

• Mandatory use of symbols and numbers
• Restricting the use of common passwords
• Blocking the use of profile information in passwords

These measures ensure better quality passwords and prevent user accounts from brute force and dictionary password attacks.

Limitation: Passwords are hard to remember, and typing in passwords on a small mobile screen degrades the user experience. Hence, developers must use authentication that does not compromise the security postures yet provide an appropriate user experience.

Patterns and Digit-based Authentication

The user must set a pattern or a digit-based PIN (typically 4 or 6 digits). Developers can utilize this as an authentication factor for their mobile application, as this authentication method is faster and more comfortable than entering passwords on a mobile screen.

Limitation: Both patterns and 4 or 6 digits PINs are limited. Also, users tend to use simple patterns and PINs like L or S patterns and 1234, 987654, date of birth as their password.

OTP-based Login

Users use an OTP received via SMS or email to authenticate themself. Thus, users do not have to remember a password, pattern, or PIN to access their account. At the same time, developers don’t have to implement password-based security mechanisms.

Biometric Authentication

Biometric authentication uses unique biological traits of users for mobile authentication. Some common examples of biometric authentication are fingerprint scanning, face unlocks, retina scans, and vocal cadence.

Developers can implement pre-coded libraries and modules to enable authentication through mobile components like the finger scanner, camera (for facial recognition), and microphone (for voice-based identification).

Social Login

It acts as a single sign-on authentication mechanism. Developers can implement this in mobile apps to use users’ login tokens from other social networking sites to allow access to the app.

Also, with social login, developers don’t need to worry about storing passwords securely and managing the password recovery option. It helps the user sign in to the mobile app without creating a separate account from within the app, hence increasing the user experience (UX).

User Interface (UI) and User Experience (UX) in Mobile Authentication

Login and registration screens are a gateway to your mobile applications; if they are a hassle, the user might not bother using the application. Thus, developers should pay a lot of attention to these screens regarding user experience and usage.

Here are some quick tips for mobile authentication screens:

• Simple Registration Process: Lengthy registration forms are a big no-no. Brainstorm essential information for creating an account via mobile application and only include those fields.
• External or Social Login: Allow users to log in via external or social accounts. This way, users don’t have to remember another password or credentials for your app.
• Facilitate Resetting: Include forget password on the login screen for good visibility and reach if the app provides password-based login. Also, setting the new password should be seamless and fast.
• Keep Users Logged In: Not logging out users on app close is helpful in a good experience. However, this depends on the type of app you offer. Developers should include MFA for better security if the app stores sensitive information or skip the stay logged-in feature altogether.
• Meaningful Error Messages: Errors and how they are handled directly impact user experience. Thus, developers should keep error messages meaningful and clearly state what went wrong and how to fix it.

Tip: Customize the mobile app keyboard for the type of input field. For example – display a numeric keyboard when asking for a PIN and include @ button when asking for an email address.

Conclusion

Considering the above points would result in a great and secure user experience for your mobile app users. However, if you feel executing these guidelines would take ample time, be informed that CIAM solutions are available in the market to handle all these requirements for you.

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It is encouraging to think that the cloud may make us safer. But, it can be just as vulnerable if we do not protect it properly.

As cybercriminals look for ways to outsmart IT, they set their sights on cloud services that are still vulnerable to attack. What is making it so much easier now is the whole movement toward cloud computing—a motion that has led many businesses to hire firms that don’t specialize in that sort of security. 

Cybercriminals are already exploiting this new security arrangement between cloud networks and organizations to commit fraud, steal sensitive financial data, or even launch ransomware attacks on local businesses. 

In fact, there is a growing list of breaches like lost personally identifiable information (PII) and stolen credit card or banking information linked directly to cloud service providers (CSPs).

Why is Cybercrime a Growing Concern?

Researchers of Trend Micro found that popular providers like Amazon, Facebook, Google, Twitter, PayPal at some point or the other have faced the repercussions of data theft where terabytes of internal business data were up for sale on the dark web.

Cybercriminals usually sneak such data from the cloud logs where it is stored and sell them wherever profitable. The time it takes for these guys to perpetrate fraud and monetize profits has decreased from weeks to a few days or just hours. 

Trend Micro further predicts that cybercrime will get even bigger; some even say it’s just beginning.

Cybercrime has reached epic proportions. According to the Kaspersky Lab, a single instance of ransomware demand (in which an attacker encrypts a computer or network and does not let go until a ransom is paid) can cost a business more than $713,000. Other associated costs can push the amount much higher. They generally include the cost of: 

• Paying the ransom
• Cleaning up
• Restoring a backup
• Improving infrastructure
• Ensuring the network is functioning
• Repairing damage

Remember the ExPetya cyberattack that hit more than 12,000 machines in over 65 countries? Think of the downright profits criminals must have made!

Narrowing Down the Biggest Cloud Problem: Attack Vectors 

Clearly, companies aren’t prepared for cyber threats, and they need to do something quickly. You need to understand exactly where your system could be at risk, and once you figure it out, you should know what you can do about it.

Multiple options to configure

Cloud computing offers many unique opportunities to deliver value to users, but it also requires an unusually high level of user competence. Different configuration mechanisms provide different levels of confidence, but they all rely on the decisions enterprises make.

When speaking of configuration, the devil is in the details. That is to say, from a few simple choices about things like storage and networking; a developer can see many problems caused by incompatibilities or invalid assumptions. Think of it like programming; it is easy to make mistakes that are almost impossible to recover from.

Attacks like Denial-of-Service (DoS)

Cybercriminals and “hacktivists” use cloud platforms for distributed denial of service attacks because they are very effective. The symmetrical nature of the cloud plays right into the hands of cybercriminals. They can rent their own botnet by using cloud computing services. 

These criminals create viruses that turn the victim’s computer into part of a “botnet,” which is then rented for activities like attacking websites or sending spam. Botnets are also now available on-demand via underground forums. It means they can stop paying when they stop needing.

Lack of consistent scanning

One of the major downsides to cloud adoption at large is that it is difficult for a company to detect and orchestrate security around the new applications when they are introduced into their environment. 

Since different departments are spinning up cloud applications, it is exhausting for a central management team to control what’s happening unless they have a unified line of communication. Businesses should regularly scan to ensure all data is encrypted and there isn’t any server that is accessible back doors.

Insecure interfaces and APIs

An insecure user interface (UI) or application program interface (API) is like an open door invitation for cyber attacks. Enterprises should prioritize security investments to build safe systems right from the start rather than bolted on later.

Whether it is a public cloud or a private cloud, your cyber security team must make efforts to maintain the flow of information sensibly and securely. These include parameters such as inventory management, testing, auditing, and abnormal activity protection. Businesses should also protect their API keys and avoid overusing them. In addition, they can also leverage open API frameworks like Open Cloud Computing. 

Not adhering to policies

Security policies play a key role in making sure that cloud data remains reliable in a business. IT organizations must put in place a process for enforcing policies before being used to protect critical data. 

It may often happen that the security team will want someone from the business to inform them about their next move. However, given that most organizations have a bunch of different account owners, it isn’t clear who to ask. On the other hand, the DevOps team may not want to do manual configuration or implementation. Besides, to pull up APIs, you must be logged in to your account.

Without the right policies and tools to monitor, track, and manage their applications and API usage, businesses cannot take full advantage of cloud benefits or protect themselves from risks like data leakage or compliance violations.

Cybercriminals to Make an Annual Profit of $10.5 Trillion by 2025

People often think of cybercrime in terms of the losses it causes, but what about its profits?

The cybercrime industry is a multi-billion-dollar business. And it’s only growing. Criminal hackers are shifting their focus from opportunistic, low-level attacks to big, high-value targets like governments and large corporations. 

According to Cybersecurity Ventures, the damage is estimated to reach $6 trillion USD by 2021. If cybercrime were a country, it would be the third-largest economy in the world after the U.S. and China.

Cybercrime is inherently different from a traditional crime. These cybercriminals operate in groups or even organize themselves into syndicates, sharing information about the operation of their schemes to increase efficiency and reduce the chance of being caught.

The cybercrime economy is a dynamic market filled with disruptive start-ups. Cybercriminals are taking business models more seriously. They’re not “sewing” together spreadsheets of stolen credit cards. They’re building platforms that can compete with the legitimate economy. There’s more to the threat than you think.

Breaking Up the Trillion-Dollar Cybercrime Market

Even though cloud computing is transforming the way businesses operate, the risks are bigger than what you will be compensated for. The responsibility, therefore, lies on both cloud users and providers.

Some tips on how to become resilient and prevent the top threats in cloud computing are: 

1. Secure APIs and restrict access

APIs are at the heart of cloud computing, so any developer worth their salt should know how to build them securely. This might mean restricting access across different networks or developing the API only at the edge of your infrastructure before letting it call other applications.

2. Ensure endpoint protection

Endpoint protection is similar to burglar alarms. Burglar alarms protect homes when they’re unoccupied because burglars can easily break in when no one’s there. 

Similarly, endpoint security protects corporate networks that are remotely bridged to a host of business-critical devices. For example, mobile employees, employees who use laptops and tablets on the road, and customers who connect to corporate Wi-Fi.

3. Encryption is key

Cloud encryption allows you to create secret texts or ciphers that are stored on a cloud. Your business data is invaluable, which is why it is important to protect your information before it gets onto the cloud. Once encrypted at the edge, even if your data is stored with a third-party provider, all data-related requests will need to involve the owner.

This way, you maintain complete control over all your customers’ information and ensure it remains confidential and secure.

4. Use strong authentication

Weak password management is one of the most common ways to hack a cloud computing system. Thus, developers should implement stronger methods of authentication and strengthen identity management.

For example, you can establish multi-factor authentication where the user needs to produce a one-time password or use biometrics and hardware token to verify their identity at various touchpoints in the user journey. 

5. Implement access management

Enable role-based access to control the scope of a user’s permissions. You can also restrict a user’s capabilities by assigning only the permissions that the user is allowed to have. This way you can ensure that your users can have their work environments exactly as you wish to set up for them.

6. Backup your data

With the increasing need for data security, organizations of all sizes are turning to data centers for backup services. Modern cloud data centers offer the whole package—unmatched protection, scalability, performance, and uptime.

Every company needs a business continuity plan to ensure that their systems are safe, even if the worse happens to them. When you have a secure data center environment to back up your data, you can keep your business up and running even in the event of a ransomware attack. 

7. Educate your team

Your employees are your biggest security risk element. Therefore, make security training mandatory for anyone who works in your company. When employees are active participants in protecting assets, they’re fully aware of their responsibilities when it comes to protecting data.

You can also create an internal guidebook for your employees so they know the best course of action in case of identity theft. Another option is to create an actual response protocol. This way, if your employees ever feel they have been compromised, they will always be prepared. 

The Bottom Line

Anonymity is a powerful tool, and the cloud has made it easier for cybercriminals to preserve anonymity by scattering networks over different servers. 

The need for cyber security is greater than ever. Cybercrime is on the rise, and it has become more sophisticated and lucrative than ever before. In addition, as companies continue to migrate their operations to the cloud, criminals increasingly view the cloud as an attractive target for profit-making criminal and espionage operations. It’s time to fight back!

The post The Rise of Profit-Focused Cybercrime on the Cloud appeared first on ReadWrite.

The need for cybersecurity has existed ever since the emergence of the first computer virus. The ‘creeper virus’ was created in 1971 and could duplicate itself across computers. Also, the threat landscape is emerging with the evolution of new technologies such as AI, Immersive Experience, Voice Economy, Cloud computing, and others. Threat actors upgrade their tools and tactics by designing new strategies to perpetrate their nefarious aims.

Cyberthreats are growing in both scale and complexity, and the need to secure critical infrastructure by businesses and public organizations has never been as urgent as now.

This article examined how cyberattacks have evolved in the past 12 months, the big lessons, what threats will look like in the future, and strategies companies can deploy to secure their endpoints and data against cyberattacks.

Key Cyberattacks in the last 12 months

1. Phishing attack in the era of Covid-19

Threat actors send a message to deceive people into downloading or clicking a malicious link. During the Great Lockdown of 2020, many people were working from home. Cybercriminals leverage this opportunity as businesses and communication entirely depend on the internet. A report by the FBI revealed phishing to be the most popular form of cybercrime in 2020, and the incident reported nearly doubled ( 241,324) what was recorded in 2019, which was 114,702.

2. The Notorious Ransomware Attack

The ransomware attack was profitable for threat actors in the last 12 months. Ransomware locks files on the victims’ system and redirects them to a page to pay a ransom to have their files returned. A notable example was the Cyrat ransomware which was masked as software for fixing corrupted DLL files on a computer system. According to Reuters, over 1500 businesses have been affected so far.

3. Attacks on IoT and IIoT

The adoption of the Internet of Things(IoT) and the Industrial Internet of Things at both the individual and industrial levels also leads to concerns around cybersecurity. These connected devices make our lives easier, and when not properly configured and secured, they could also leak our sensitive data to the bad guys.

In 2020, an IoT botnet employed vulnerable access control systems in office buildings. As a result, someone accessing the building by swiping a keycard may be ignorant that the system has been infected.

4. Password Compromise

A security survey conducted by Google revealed that about 52% of people reuse passwords across different sites. It means a cybercriminal can successfully access all accounts by breaching a single account. As a result, password attacks remain a top attack vector for most organizations. In the same survey, 42% of the people ticked security breaches due to a password compromise.

A notable example was a list of leaked passwords found on a hacker forum. It was said to be the most extensive collection of all time. About 100GB text file which includes 8.4 billion passwords collated from past data breaches.

You can type your details in https://haveibeenpwned.com/ to know if your email or password has been breached.

5. Identity Theft

Cases of Theft doubled from 2019 to 2020 based on a report by the Federal Trade Commission of the United States. The commission received around 1.400.000 cases. Most cases include threat actors targeting individuals affected by the pandemic financially. Cybercriminals also leveraged the unemployment benefits reserved for those affected by the pandemic. The fraudsters claimed these benefits using information stolen from thousands of people. Suppose we merge this with what recently occurred on Facebook and Linkedin, where users’ data were scraped off public APIs by malicious actors. In that case, one could imagine how privacy is becoming a subject of concern for both individuals and companies.

6. Insider Threat

Insider Threat is a form of attack that is not as popular as others yet affects both small and big businesses. Anyone familiar with a company’s internal operations and structure can be a suspect. A Verizon report of 2019 revealed about 57% of database breaches are caused by insiders.

One of the best approaches to limiting the impact of this threat is restricting the privileges of staff to critical areas.

What Are The Lessons From The Biggest Cyberattack?

The attacks mentioned above and others have consequences and lessons to avoid a repeat. Let’s explore some of them:

1. There’s nothing new about the threats

There was a similar attack like Wannacry, which affected Sony in 2014. With regular patching and firewall, organizations can still prevent infiltration or exploitation.  Interestingly, the actual patch of the vulnerability exploited by Wannacry was released two months before the event, but many organizations failed to patch it. Those who did not patch had their critical infrastructures impacted by the attacks.

2. Several organizations are unbelievably vulnerable

NotPetya cyberthreat exploited Microsoft vulnerability (SMB-1) by targeting businesses that failed to patch. As a result, organizations have to develop cyber-resilience against attacks by constantly downloading and installing patches across their systems.

3. Prioritize Data Backup

Even if you lose your critical data to a ransomware attack, a backup will help you keep your operations running. Therefore, organizations must back up their data outside of the network.

4. Develop an Incident Response Plan

Proactive response to incidents and reporting enabled most companies to halt the spread of Wannacry even before the incident. Regulators expect companies to issue warnings within 72 hours or get penalized.

5. Paying Ransom only create an opportunity for more attacks

While it is easier to pay the ransom with the expectation of having your files restored, as long as the communication link is maintained, the threat actors will always come back. Also, it is like empowering them to continue the chain of attacks.

What Would Cyberattacks Look Like In The Future?

Cybersecurity experts predicted the financial damages caused by cyber threats to reach $6 trillion by the end of 2021.  Cyber Attack incidents are also expected to occur every 11 seconds in 2021. It was 19 seconds in 2019 and 40 seconds in 2016. In the future, we would have cyberattacks possibly happening every second. As a result, we would see a surge in frequency and significant financial damages to victims.

Deepfake and Synthetic Voices

Deepfake trended in 2019 as threat actors innovate means of improving their tools and technologies for malicious and entertaining purposes such as illegal pornography featuring. In the future, cybercriminals will call into customer call centers leveraging synthetic voices to decipher whether organizations have the tools and technologies to detect their operations. One of the major sectors that will be targeted will be the banking sector.

Conversational Economy Breach

As companies begin to deploy voice technology and individuals adopt digital assistant technologies like Alexa and Siri, fraudsters will also not relent in discovering the potential opportunities locked up in the voice economy. According to Pin Drop Statistics, 90 voice attacks took place each minute in the United States. 1 out of 796 calls to the call center was malicious. Now that we are all migrating to Clubhouse, we should also expect voice data breaches around voice-based applications.

Some challenges companies would have to deal with include protecting voice interaction, privacy concerns, and supporting call centers with tools and solutions for detecting and preventing fraud.

Security Cam Video Data Breach

In March 2021, Bloomberg reported a breach of surveillance camera data. The breach gave the hackers access to live feeds of over 150,000 security cameras located in companies, hospitals, prisons, police departments, and schools. Major companies that were affected include Cloudflare Inc. and Tesla Inc. Not only that, the hackers were able to view live feeds from psychiatric hospitals, women’s health clinics, and offices of Verkada. These Silicon Valley Startup sourcing data led to the breach.

This scenario paints a vivid picture of what a security cam video data breach looks like and the consequences- privacy breach.

Apple/Google Pay Fraud

Cybercriminals are utilizing stolen credit cards to purchase via Google and Apple pay. Recently, over 500, 000 former Google+ users had their data leaked to external developers. Google offered to pay US$7.5m in a settlement to address a class-action lawsuit against it. 

3 Things To Do To Stay Protected

If you are concerned about the growing rates at which these cyber-attacks occur, here are three important things you can do:

Secure Your Hardware

While it is exciting to acquire the latest equipment, securing them with the best cyber threat prevention measures is also essential. For instance, you can use a complex password and reset the default passwords established by the hardware manufacturers. After setting up a password, it is also essential to set up two-factor authentication as an additional security layer. You can also use strong endpoint security tools to secure your systems and network.

Encrypt and Backup Your Data

A formidable cyberthreat prevention measure incorporates two elements: Blocking access to confidential data and rendering the data useless peradventure it falls into the hand of cybercriminals. The latter can be actualized by encrypting the data. Encryption is one of the best solutions to protect against data breaches. Ensure you encrypt your customer information, employee information, and other essential business data.

Educate Your Employees

While banning your staff can be a security measure five years ago, the pandemic and the adoption of remote working have necessitated the “bring your own device(BYOD) approach. And security has to be fashioned in the light of this new development. One best way to achieve this is to plan a simulation on detecting and avoiding phishing links and fake websites.

It is also vital to foster a security culture in the workplace. For example, “If you see something —  say something.”

Conclusion

As new technologies continue to emerge, so will the sophistication of cyberattacks be. Trends such as hackers snooping on a conversation with Siri, Alexa will increase significantly. They can manipulate IoT devices and recruit them into an army of weaponized bots to take critical assets down, or shut down smart homes and cities. Threat actors can also leverage deep fake technology and synthetic voices in social engineering and various scams.

Thus, enterprises that want to stay protected always need to prioritize their people’s cybersecurity, data, and infrastructure.

Image Credit: Sora Shimazaki; Pexels; Thank you!

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