How to Select the Best MFA Approach for Your Business Entity

You may have heard about MFAs for your business. An MFA is multifactor authentication. It is a security measure you can take to make sure that nobody unauthorized is getting into your computer network.

At a time when cyberattacks are increasing every year, you will probably be glad you are taking measures like this one.

There are different MFA possibilities, though, and you may not be sure which one you should use. We’ll talk about two of the options in this article and which one makes sense for your business entity.

The Device-based MFA Approach

When you’re talking about the best MFA approach, the first thing you should consider is the device-based method that is popular with so many different companies. If you are using the device-based approach, you’re saying that the user needs to clear their secondary authentication requirement when they log into their work device.

There are two ways of doing this. They can either do it when the device boots up or when the login first occurs. The user, who should be one of your workers, must use the MFA code you gave them, but also their login credentials.

Those would be the two factors in this multifactor authentication method.

This method means that it’s highly unlikely that anyone unauthorized will be able to access your company’s data and trade secrets. If you also have full disk encryption, the approach is liable to work.

The Application-level MFA Approach

The other common option for companies is the application-level MFA approach. This is what IT people would call a more granular methodology.

The individual logging in, which would be one of your workers again, would try to access an individual app that your company used for the job.

The worker would need secondary authentication to access that app, meaning a secondary security level is in place, like with the device-based approach, just in a different location.

If you think about this for a moment, you can see how the “two-factor” term applies to each method. They’re pretty different from one another, though.

If you’re using the application-level MFA approach, you’ll see that this is a more frequent occurrence. That’s because every user will have to go through the process each time they log in.

If you have a device-agnostic environment, this method makes sense since you have workers who are accessing your company’s IT resources on their personal devices.

Which of These Methods Is Better for Your Company?

At this point, you should be able to see how much two-factor authentication matters if you’re trying to retain online security.

The only question is which of these two, the application-level approach or the device-based one, makes more sense for your workers and your company.

The great news is that there really isn’t a wrong choice here. Both methods present strong security options, and if you set up either one, a successful hacker attack is not all that likely.

It might come down to personal preference. Here are key points to keep in mind, though, as you’re selecting either the app or device-based multi-factor authentication method.

You Need to Think About Everyone Who’s Using Your Network

As you’re making this decision, it helps to think about all the individuals who might need to access your company’s computer network. You will have employees that will need to do so, but also vendors and IT admins.

These are your end-users, and what are their capabilities? If you have individuals in a customer support role, it might be impractical to ask that they use more complex physical login methods. Others might be suitable, such as fingerprint scans or facial or retinal scanning.

You might also use push notifications rather easily. Anyone can use those, regardless of their status or job title.

You Want Convenient Methods for All Your End Users

Again, you’ll want to think about what the end-user must go through to access your company’s network.

You want them to be able to access the data they need, but you don’t want to make it extremely challenging for them just because you want to have multi-factor authentication in place.

Biometrics are your friend in this regard. They should be your go-to because anyone can learn how to use them, and they can set them up with minimal difficulty as well.

If you’re not certain about that, just look at how popular the iPhone facial scanning technology has become.

That, along with a passcode that the phone user taps in, is the perfect multi-factor authentication method that you’ll see people using out in the world every day.

Using the device’s camera or a finger scanner can happen each time the end-user logs in, and they will not find it challenging.

Biometric device hardware works very well now, so this can be a choice that makes sense for your company, regardless of what products you make or service you offer.

Educate Your Users

The most critical thing is that you slowly roll out the system you want to use, whether you choose the app or device-based MFA approach. You should talk to all your end-users about it before you set it up so they know what’s coming.

You can then conduct training seminars to make sure everyone understands how this new tech works.

They should be able to grasp it fairly easily since it should not be all that different from what is going on with their smartphones and tablets already.

Once the system is in place, you can teach a new hire how to use it during the onboarding process.

Once you have an MFA system in place that seems to work for your company, you should feel better about your security measures overall.

This system existing can foil even the most determined hackers, and it will also show investors that you care about protecting your trade secrets and customer data. That might be what convinces them to invest in your company.