Can Authentication Negatively Impact the User Experience?


Authentication can sometimes feel like a balancing act. On one hand, securing your digital experience is a top priority. Preserving your customers’ trust in your services is often key to maintaining a long-term relationship with your brand. On the other hand, in the age of digital transformation, customers also want a simple, easy-to-navigate digital experience.


Too often, security and user experience are at odds with one another. Extra security can mean extra roadblocks on the customer’s digital journey. It’s hard enough to remember all your usernames and passwords. Factor in two-factor authentication (2FA), SMS text messages and more, and you’re very likely to have frustrated users.


Risk-Based Authentication Today


One strategy that can help address these problems is risk-based authentication (RBA). This method involves creating various levels of authentication based on a risk score and built from the risk factors found for each user or activity. In these scenarios, organizations look for users that show anomalous behavior. Perhaps they are using a different device than normal, or accessing their accounts from a different location. In these cases, they will “step up” authentication requirements, only forcing their most risky users to go through the additional step of multifactor authentication (MFA). Then, the remaining low-risk users only need to complete basic authentication steps.


Risk-based authentication is considered an improvement over the alternatives, forcing all users to complete multifactor authentication or having no users complete it. For many organizations, high-risk users make up less than 1 percent of their user population, so there can potentially be considerable savings on operational costs around MFA.


However, RBA strategies still present chal ..

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