poses, private businesses have been remarkably slow on the uptake – to their extreme peril. The Case for MFA At any given time, the decisionmakers at a business have roughly a thousand priorities to work through. They may know abstractly that MFA is a good thing to implement, especially when a significant percentage of their workforce is operating outside of their own network on a daily basis – but that doesn’t mean they’re making it a top priority. This is why it’s incumbent on trusted advisors and IT professionals to aggressively make the case for MFA. The fact is that all of a company’s valuable work can be vaporized in an instant with a sufficiently destructive breach. At least one study suggests that most businesses that suffer a critical breach end up going out of business within six months. The stakes could not be higher. Implementing MFA Once you’ve managed to get the decision-makers on board, it’s time to implement MFA. The first step is to assess a company’s current use of MFA. Figure out precisely how many user accounts and apps are currently protected by it and determine whether or not the MFA efforts implemented to this point actually correspond with the security challenges of remote work. From there, you’re going to want to rank priorities. Resources are inevitably limited, and you’re not going to be able to implement MFA uniformly across the board, at least not at first. For instance, it may be decided that increasing coverage to all tier 1 apps is the top priority. Next, you’ll have to sort out your customer’s hardware needs. It helps if the employees have company phones that codes can be sent to, but it can be risky to rely on a single backup option (because what if their smartphone is lost or broken?). Specialized hardware such as a YubiKey are a great help. The YubiKey is a hardware authentication device that protects access to computers, networks and online services with support of one-time passwords, public-key cryptography, authentication and the Universal 2nd Factor and FIDO2 protocols. Post-implementation Of course, the process doesn’t simply end once you’ve implemented MFA for all or some of a customer’s accounts. Proper MFA implementation requires constant vigilance. For one thing, the MFA procedures must be codified into a company’s IT policies. Best-practices security training surrounding cyber threats and MFA must be offered to employees. And the technology project team must be organized to install new solutions if they find that the current MFA implementation is lacking. Finally, companies also need to make sure they’re constantly measuring the results of all their hard work. Run the numbers – see how many employees are using MFA each day and consider testing other MFA options if adoption isn’t high enough. And, of course, make sure to routinely seek out feedback from managers and users on security and the login process. The two trends mentioned at the start of this article – the surges in WFH and cybercrime – show no signs of slowing down; in fact, just the opposite. MFA, of course, isn’t the only solution to this new threat: any robust IT security plan will incorporate a variety of tactics. But it’s a non-negotiable part of the package. Neglect it, and you’re putting your customers at risk. J Nelson Cicchitto is president and CEO of Avatier Corporation, specialists in ‘Identity Anywhere’ solutions for enterprise systems, which he helped launch in 1995. Which of the following investments are you planning to make around cybersecurity during the next year? Employee security awareness training 54% Creating a culture of compliance 50% Password management 48% Greater control and visibility to help detect network-based threats 44% Infrastructure secure management 42% Password authentication 37% Establishing a stronger connection between access policy and access tools 35% Adopting to zero-trust and zero-knowledge approach 32% Privileged access management to secure remote access sessions 31% Source: Sapio Research, Keeper Security, 2022 Yubikey 5-Series Family 9 REMOTE WORK SOLUTIONS rwsmagazine.com
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