Intelligent CIO Europe Issue 07 | Page 53

CIO opinion CIO OPINION “ TAKING THIS BUSINESS- DRIVEN SECURITY APPROACH WILL NOT ONLY HELP TO LOWER COSTS BUT WILL ALSO REDUCE RISKS AND IMPROVE THE USER EXPERIENCE. industry is starting to step up to and address. We’re seeing phone manufacturers trying to establish a verifiable ID that will enable organisations to feel more confident about extending trust to a device. The increased popularity of enterprise mobile applications only heightens the need for a consumer-simple experience, one that provides access control commensurate with the risk of a given transaction. MFA, SSO, authentication standards, biometrics and smartphones will each continue to play a role as the market moves towards risk-aware authentication. So watch this space! for the user but getting to this point has historically been costly and a complex challenge for enterprises to solve. Today however, with a maturing ecosystem of biometric-ready smartphones – coupled with the adoption of open standards – the stars finally seem to be aligning for the broader adoption of biometrics. www.intelligentcio.com 5. Mobile identity: Smartphone-based authentication is becoming increasingly popular but it still poses challenges. Sure, you can use advanced authentication tools such as biometrics to provide assurance that the phone’s owner is the one using the phone; but how do you know if the phone itself can be trusted? This is the big question the Keeping ahead of trends in this area can not only help to provide security teams with peace of mind, but to also make life easier for users. Yet for these techniques to be effective, they need to be evaluated with the business in mind. The most important thing is to work out what is right for your individual business; where are your most ‘risky’ users, what applications or systems have the most vital company data and what kind of access do each of your users really need? These kinds of questions will help you focus your identity strategy on the needs of the business. Taking this business-driven security approach will not only help to lower costs but will also reduce risks and improve the user experience. n INTELLIGENTCIO 53