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What Is Identity Authentication and How Can It Protect Your Business

Tram Nguyen
January 19, 2019

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With around 16.7 million victims of identity theft online in 2017 alone, you can bet businesses are in great need of protecting their private and personal online data. This is where identity authentication comes in to play.

But what exactly is identity authentication? And, how can it help protect your business’s online data?

Look no further. We’ve got your bases covered with this complete breakdown of what identity authentication is, and why it’s so important for your business.

Why You Need Identity Authentication

These days, over 4 million Americans do their work from home for a majority of the work week. Even if your company doesn’t employ freelancers or remote employees, business worldwide is turning more and more to online forums.  54% of workers work remote at least once a month.

With the ever-rising rate of online business practices, also comes the unfortunate rise in online fraud.

Hackers are finding it easier to hack into online databases, which means your business data may no longer be private.

Data that can include everything from trade secrets, sales numbers, employees’ personal information, client lists, and just about anything you might like to keep private is now vulnerable to hacker attacks.

Because of this, businesses are turning to solutions like identity authentication to protect their data and the personal information of clients and customers.

Identity Authentication: Defined

Identity authentication is very simply put, the system that a business has in place to make sure the person viewing and accessing data is who they say they are.

We’ve all seen it, every time you forget your Gmail password you encounter it: multi-factor identity authentication.

One of the most simple forms of identity authentication is when a company has employees or users set up a unique username and password to access information online.

The more characters, and more varied (i.e. having a combination of letters, numbers, and symbols), the harder it is for hackers to guess and break in.

For Especially Sensitive Business Information

Many businesses store especially sensitive information like financial records online. For more secure identity authentication, you can use something called KBA, or knowledge-based systems.

This requires the user to answer questions only the appropriate people have answers to. Highly advanced versions of this sensitive identity authentication for businesses might include things like retina scans, voice recognition, or fingerprint scanning.

With a quality identity authentication system in place, if these questions are answered incorrectly, or a hacker fails to pass the other forms of authentication (scans, etc.), the account in question will lock.

The owner of the account will then receive notification of the attempted logins, allowing them to make any needed changes or take further security measures.

Many businesses will have a fraud department in connection with their identity authentication system that can be contacted in case of attempted hacking.

More Benefits of Identity Authentication

Now that you have a basic understanding of what identity authentication is, find out exactly how it can benefit your business and how to go about getting it.

Check out our blog post “The 3 Benefits of Multi-Factor Identity Authentication for your Business,” and take one step closer to ultimate cyber-security for all your businesses private data.

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