You’ve probably heard IT and security teams buzzing about continuous authentication, also called continuous access evaluation. It’s quickly becoming a key solution in the fight against security breaches. Until recently, continuous authentication was often considered a subset of traditional MFA solutions. Now, it’s rightfully being recognized as an independent necessity for achieving a robust, proactive security posture.
Contact centers and businesses in the BPO sector need robust authentication to keep their digital infrastructure and data secure–and this is where regulatory requirements like PCI come into play. Traditionally, BPOs have used passwords to protect their systems, but repeated cyber attacks have proven passwords ineffective in protecting valuable data. In response, many organizations started adopting other authentication solutions. IT admins would set up employee authentication apps to add an additional layer of security.
Currently, many contact centers use hardware tokens to secure their systems. While both hardware tokens and authentication apps have enhanced security to an extent for these systems, sophisticated social engineering attacks have shown undeniable vulnerabilities.
That’s where behavioral multi-factor authentication comes in to bridge the gap in contact center security.
Behavioral MFA uses behavior to authenticate users. How an individual interacts with their computer is as unique as our fingerprints, and with machine learning systems, we can use these behaviors to identify and authenticate users automatically and continuously.
The system is used for access control and provides higher security than other authentication solutions like fingerprint readers or even hard tokens. They are often used in contact centers, hospitals, and other industries that require robust protection against cyber threats.
Behavioral multi-factor authentication is the only solution that can offer a 100% reduction in phishing and a 99% reduction in risk from stolen credentials. It provides a solid defense against even the most sophisticated social engineering attacks. They also meet PCI 4 and PSD2 requirements for multi-factor authentication.
Twosense’s Behavioral MFA analyzes user behavior and leverages machine learning to model behavioral patterns. It looks at behaviors such as keystroke timing and mouse movement from each user and builds a user profile. The solution doesn’t collect any data on what the user is typing, where they’re clicking, or what they’re doing but how they are doing it.
Behavioral MFA provides continuous, persistent authentication by constantly monitoring how users interact with their devices.
Continuous authentication refers to the ongoing process of verifying a user's identity throughout their entire session or interaction with a system rather than just at the initial login. This approach enhances security by constantly monitoring and validating the user's identity, reducing the risk of unauthorized access.
By leveraging user behavior and machine learning, Twosense builds a model of each user's behavior, creating a baseline of trust and continuously validating the user's identity throughout the day based solely on their digital behavior.
Once the system has built a user profile, it continuously monitors user behavior against the established model. Based on how closely the behavior matches the profile, the system assigns a trust score.
IT admins can configure the system to respond to a low trust score. They can set up automated workflows that can notify admins, ask the user to authenticate through passwords or other MFA solutions or send an email to the manager to approve or deny access to the user.
The entire system operates behind the scenes without any effort or actions needed from the user–unless and until the system detects a behavioral mismatch.
One of the main drawbacks of traditional authentication solutions is that they’re prone to social engineering attacks. In the past, security solutions focused on defending systems against technical attacks that exploited technical vulnerabilities.
However, currently, most cyberattacks begin with a social engineering aspect. Bad actors would trick employees or users into giving up their credentials or access to secure systems by pretending to be technicians or senior management.
Traditional authentication solutions are woefully unequipped to deal with this new threat. If a bad actor can convince a user to give their login credentials through phishing mail, they can force the user to enter their two-factor authentication codes or even their hardware tokens (to an extent).
Behavioral MFA eliminates human error. It works behind the scenes without any action from the user, thus reducing the risk of social engineering attacks successfully granting an unauthorized individual access.
Another advantage is that behavioral MFA is continuous. Behavioral MFA continuously checks to see if the user is who they claim to be, bringing down the time to detection from six months to around two minutes. Even if a bad actor gains access to systems, they will have very little time to do any damage before the system detects them and ends the session.
Behavioral MFA benefits all types of businesses. It offers state-of-the-art security without compromising on convenience. Unlike other systems, which require considerable training and resources to manage, Twosense can be deployed quickly as software with minimal support needed.
That said, businesses in industries at high risk of cyber security threats require a robust authentication solution, for many employees can benefit significantly from behavioral MFA.
Contact centers, hospitals, businesses in the financial sector, and other organizations where a large workforce regularly requires access to sensitive data are particularly vulnerable to social engineering attacks. Attackers often rely on MFA fatigue to force employees to grant access to secure systems, bypassing other authentication solutions.
Behavioral MFA is phishing-resistant and can reduce the possibility of MFA fatigue to a large extent.
Q: How long does Twosense take to build user profiles? How does authentication work in the meantime?
A: On average, Twosense takes 2 weeks to build a user profile. During this period, the system may rely on a fallback MFA configured by the IT admin to authenticate the users.
Q: How long does it take for Twosense to detect that someone other than the authorized user has gained access?
A: Twosense performs an MFA challenge every minute. If an unauthorized user tries to access the system, Twosense will detect a behavioral mismatch within a minute and alert the IT team according to their chosen policy
Q: Is Behavioral MFA PCI Compliant?
A: Yes. According to PCI SSC, NIST, and the European Commission, behavioral biometrics meet PCI 4 and PSD2 requirements for multi-factor authentication.