Better still, use phishing-resistant passwordless identity authentication standards that reduce sign-on friction for workforce users: data analysis.
Analysis of billions of monthly identity authentications and verifications worldwide on a firm’s cloud-based identity and access management platform has indicated that the use of multi-factor authentication (MFA) has nearly doubled since 2020.
Additionally, the firm’s data is showing that “phishing-resistant authenticators” were working well in terms of security and convenience for its users. Such phishing resistance comes in the form of passwordless login mechanisms and FIDO2 safeguards that offer an optimal mix of security and user experience.
In the data more than 80% of Business Web Application Attacks and nearly half of all business email compromise attacks had resulted from stolen username and passwords. MFA verifies identities by asking users to provide different types of information or factors to gain access to an account or application. However, an increase in sophisticated MFA bypass attacks is prompting organizations to evaluate the need for phishing-resistant authentication flows.
Other findings from the data in Okta’s user ecosystem include:
- 90% of the firm’s administrators, and 64% of the firm’s users signed in using MFA during the month of January 2023.
- Sign-in methods that offered the highest phishing resistance also proved to offer the fastest, most reliable user experience.
- 87% of account logins were using MFA, comprising users in insurance (77%), professional services (75%), construction (74%), and media & communications (72%) forming the top five industry adopters, overshadowing those in highly-regulated industries.
- MFA adoption by the firm’s workforce customers jumped from 35% to 50% in two months between February and March 2020.
- Organizations with fewer than 300 employees (79%) exceeded the MFA usage-level of enterprises with more than 20,000 employees (54%).
According to the firm’s co-founder and CEO, Todd McKinnon: “By sharing data on our customers’ adoption of these critical technologies, we can drive greater progress with governments, our partners, and our customers.”
