Question: Guess who is pregnant? Answer: <Insert friend’s name here as answer>! Response: shock or happiness… Punchline: “APRIL FOOLS!”
If you are over the age of 10, you have probably at some point been subjected to (or been the perpetrator of) some form of April Fools’ Day practical joke. It may have been as simple as the false pregnancy announcement from a friend above or an elaborate prank involving props, actors and a well-planned script.
The History Of April Fools’ Day
By most accounts, the tradition of establishing April Fools’ Day with practical jokes dates back to France in the 1500’s. According to infoplease.com:
“In 1582, Pope Gregory XIII ordered a new calendar (the Gregorian Calendar) to replace the old Julian Calendar. The new calendar called for New Year’s Day to be celebrated Jan. 1. That year, France adopted the reformed calendar and shifted New Year’s day to Jan. 1. According to a popular explanation, many people either refused to accept the new date, or did not learn about it, and continued to celebrate New Year’s Day on April 1. Other people began to make fun of these traditionalists, sending them on “fool’s errands” or trying to trick them into believing something false. Eventually, the practice spread throughout Europe.”
Over the decades, this tradition has taken many forms but all center around lightening the stress of normal life with the levity of a harmless practical joke. In IT Security there seems to be very few opportunities to “harmless” practical jokes as even the smallest cyber breach scare can send even the most stalwart CISO into a potential heart attack.
11 Factor Authentication
The good news is that now there is a way to play a practical joke on your CISO without giving him a heart attack. Just let him know that you’ve decide to adopt 11 factor authentication to ensure no credential is ever stolen ever again.
Most companies have already adopted some form of two-factor authentication and already the user community is pushing back. The added requirements of PINs or biometric scans has shown to be time consuming and not completely as fool-proof as expected. The drive is to improve security so it stands to reason that more factors will equate to more security.
If 2 factors authentication is more secure than 1 factor (password only), then 3 is even more secure than 2 and so on. To drive home this point at Saturday Night Live-level extremes we launched a new 11-Factor Authentication solution to showcase the absurdity of this approach.
The headline of this new app describes itself as:
The most secure, friction-filled password manager of all time.
11 Factor remembers all your passwords for you, and then makes it basically impossible for anyone (including you) to retrieve them.
See how far you can go into the ll-factor authentication challenge and then step back for the real questions that come to mind, which are:
- How many factors are required to absolutely and beyond all shadow of doubt be truly be secure when authenticated a user to an information resource?
- At what point will the user community revolt and decide that they cannot take it any longer?
The best of both worlds can only be an infinite-level MFA solution that has absolutely no drag.
MFA Without The Drag
Acceptto understands that you are extremely busy and don’t have time to waste on remembering passwords, retrieving and typing in PINs or scanning various body parts in order to differentiate your identity from someone else. Your immutable identity is a combination of your physical behaviors, attributes and Digital DNA. We believe passwords are no longer relevant and that what you need is a way to immutably authenticate someone in order to be truly secure and compliant.
We call it Continuous Cognitive Authentication. You can eliminate preventable harm with our Biobehavioral AIML technology that enables frictionless authentication, prevents credentials stuffing instantaneously, ensures your true immutable identity continuously, and dramatically reduces risk, likelihood of fraud and cost of helpdesk operations without the guesswork or latency.
Acceptto is a transformative multi-factor authentication technology that delivers continuous identity protection and peace of mind in an age where passwords are ineffective and identity authentication is mission critical.
See for yourself what Acceptto can do to ensure your employees, partners and customers can authenticate without passwords and still ensure security and privacy, especially for your PCI compliance requirements. Register for a free trial today.
