More Individualized Approach Helps Optimize Both Security & User Experience
IBM Security announced it is extending its artificial intelligence (AI) technology originally developed to protect users in the financial services industry, to clients in all industries via the company’s identity-as-a-service (IDaaS) offering. IBM Cloud Identity now features AI-based adaptive access capabilities that help continually assess employee or consumer user risk levels when accessing applications and services. The solution escalates suspicious user interactions for further authentication, while those identified as lower risk are “fast tracked” so they can access applications and services they need.
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With data breaches on the rise, traditional means of securing access, like passwords, are often not enough to prevent unauthorized access. The rise of credential-stuffing attacks, where a malicious actor obtains a list of credentials and tests them at various other sites using a bot, demonstrates that many password combinations have been leaked. According to a 2019 report, compromised and weak credentials are cited as the cause for more than 80% of data breaches.1 Meanwhile, 2017 research found that large companies are managing hundreds of applications – up to 788 custom applications on average for companies with more than 50,000 employees.2 Considering the amount of programs and passwords that employees are managing between their professional and personal lives, it is increasingly important that new security measures do not hinder user experience.
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“Companies are constantly trying to optimize both security and user experience, but the trick is ensuring security is not disrupting the everyday user journey,” said Jason Keenaghan, Director, IBM Security. “IBM Cloud Identity with adaptive access is using AI to give organizations a holistic view of context for user access, based on indicators like malware and risk indicators, device insights, and user behavior, to help them focus security on high risk logins and give the majority of users seamless access to their accounts and applications.”
Adaptive Access: Smart Context
Many organizations continue to rely on older username and password methods to provide employee and consumer users access to services. Due to the patchwork of applications and solutions organizations are working with, they may not be able to deploy more modern security layers. This can create a blind spot that prevents security teams from easily implementing rules that flag suspicious indicators like malicious logins, unknown locations, unrecognized devices, and whether a user is on a company’s network VPN.
