Advisory Note: Strong Authentication - 70261

This research note provides a comprehensive overview about authentication technologies available today. Strong authentication is a challenge for most organizations. However, selecting the appropriate strong authentication mechanism(s) is a difficult decision. This research note provides criteria for selecting the mechanism or combination of mechanisms which fits best to the different use cases like internal users accessing highly sensitive information or external users doing small financial transactions.

The research note analyzes authentication mechanisms based on several criteria, including:

• Authentication strength
• Logistics
• Mobile support
• Usability
• Reusability
• Support for specific privacy requirements

Based on that information, customers can more easily rate the authentication mechanisms they are looking at. Selecting the right combination still is a complex task, because requirements and use case are pretty different across organizations. KuppingerCole recommends not to look at a single technology but at a combination of technologies, supported by versatile authentication platforms.