Will this be the year of identity?

Passwords are hacked with ease, and MFAs are not the answer. Isn’t it time the biggest companies protect their clients and workforce with an identity-based perimeter?

What’s been your highlight this year? Mine was unusual: sitting in a dingy AirBnB in South London with a crack team of hackers. We ran the project as part of a white paper assessing the safety of challenger banks with our partners at WeFightFraud (you can read the alarming results here) led by the charming, cheeky and utterly terrifying Tony Sales.

While the surroundings (and the cold sausage rolls) weren’t exactly memorable, the lesson they taught me was. Because that was the day I saw Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) completely collapse.

Hypr estimates that between 80-90% of MFA applications is hopelessly easy to breach. All those times you received a text to verify your login to Office 365 or confirmed your email on the very same device used to set up a new account; all pointless. Hackers use some sophisticated (and not-so-sophisticated) methods to bypass MFA so that it’s barely more secure than using a simple password. (And let’s face it, we’re one of the 64% of people that use the same or similar password for everything.)

Attacks include phishing, SMS OTP (those texts purporting to come from Amazon), even social engineering – where the hacker simply calls up the IT help desk and engineers the call centre staff to give up the passwords or reset them to a new mobile number – and MitM (Man in the Middle) can all yield results. And then there’s ‘MFA Fatigue’ – which involves spamming victims with authentication prompts until they grant the attacker access accidentally or out of frustration – perceiving it as a legitimate login attempt or a bug. It is a type of brute force approach to bypassing MFA that takes advantage of how approving MFA requests has become so routine that employees assume the prompts in their authenticator apps are always valid.

Cybersecurity Ventures expects global cybercrime costs to grow by 15 percent per year over the next five years, reaching $10.5 trillion USD annually by 2025, up from $3 trillion USD in 2015. This represents the greatest transfer of economic wealth in history, risks the incentives for innovation and investment, is exponentially larger than the damage inflicted from natural disasters in a year, and will be more profitable than the global trade of all major illegal drugs combined.

The global MFA and cloud computing markets are projected to grow by nearly 15.6% and 17.9% by 2027 and 2028 respectively.1,2 Password manager LastPass reported that 95% of organisations in 2021 used software-based authenticators for MFA rather than physical tokens or biometrics.

But given the higher risks of attacks – and the enormous costs in dealing with data breaches and lost business – companies need to look for alternative solutions in 2023.

Several high-profile organisations, including Cisco Talos, Microsoft, and Uber, have been breached by threat actors who have utilised this technique. Whilst MFA plays a significant part in strengthening an organisation’s cybersecurity posture, it is not a ‘silver bullet’.

As a temporary workaround for MFA fatigue, it is likely that organisations will increasingly disable push notifications of “approve sign-in” requests and seek to ensure that number matching and location-based verification is used to gain access to accounts instead.

But nothing matches the security of passwordless ID verification tools. APLYiD specialises in biometrics than can confirm a user’s identity against government and credit bureau records including PEP and sanctions checks in under 90 seconds. By including its API in your company’s authentication and login process that time can be cut even shorter and be a simple, safe and totally secure way of restricting access to your workforce. APLYiD has reduced cybercrime to the tune of over $2 billion dollars in New Zealand alone, and proven over 98% effective in cutting identity theft and data breaches.

Placing an identity ‘perimeter’ around your most valuable data, and unhackable biometric protocols in place to prevent unauthorised access, is the soundest way of futureproofing your business.

And the benefits for your workforce are much greater. No more MFA Fatigue or phishing emails gaining access to your systems. No more social engineering attempts via your IT departments. Just simple access that allows your teams to work virtually, anywhere in the world, with total security.

If we see worldwide adoption of biometric ID perimeters in 2023, then my highlight for the year will be very different. Personally, I’d love to sit in an ugly AirBnB and listen to hackers swearing when they realise they can’t break into the world’s biggest companies.

I’ll probably bring my own sausage rolls this time.

Read More News & Insights

Industry News

Tranche 2: The Next Big Step in compliance

If you are a Lawyer, Real Estate Agent, or an Accountant in Australia, you may be wondering what exactly this ‘Tranche 2’ stuff will mean for you in practical terms.

Read more
Financial Services

Press Release: APLYiD Partners with HES Fintech to Enhance Digital Identity Verification Solutions

Press Release: APLYiD Partners with HES Fintech to Enhance Digital Identity Verification Solutions

Read more
Estate Agents

Unmasking Property Fraud with Biometric AML Technology

It's not hard to scam an agency, and HMRC is on the hunt for AML negligence with £5k fines. Yikes. But there is an easy way to fix this...

Read more
Industry News

Heartbreaking Fraud

As Valentine's Day approaches, love is undoubtedly in the air, but unfortunately, so is the risk of identity theft within the online dating sphere.

Read more
Industry News

New Year, New AML regulations?

As we kick off the new year, APLYiD, a leading identity verification company, is navigating through changes in the regulatory landscape.

Read more
Industry News

The Power of Biometric Verification

In today's fast-changing world of digital security, biometric verification has become a crucial way to authenticate identities.

Read more
EDD

What is Enhanced Due Diligence (EDD)?

What is Enhanced Due Diligence and why is it so important?

Read more
EDD

Enhanced Due Diligence with Outsourced ACAMS Professionals and Software

At APLYiD our mission is to end identity fraud and digital crime – that’s why we’ve made the best biometric identity verification software on the planet. But as our technology gets more sophisticated...

Read more
Financial Services

How are hackers beating banks’ ID verification software?

At APLYiD our mission is to end identity fraud and digital crime – that’s why we’ve made the best biometric identity verification software on the planet. But as our technology gets more sophisticated...

Read more
Legal Services

From Russia with Dislike

The cost of living crisis, competitive landscape and ongoing war in Ukraine are causing major headaches for the legal industry

Read more
Vehicle Finance

New plates, same old problems

The new 2023 plate change will come in a volatile, ultra-competitive market. Here’s how to win over those harder-to-reach customers

Read more
Estate Agents

Moving on up?

There are some tiny, fragile signs that the UK Property market is recovering

Read more
Accountancy Firms

Count me out

The accounting industry is in crisis – but with one simple software tweak it could become a fun, rewarding job once more

Read more
Financial Services

Abandon(ment) hope

As interest rates continue to rise, so too do abandonment rates. By creating a better customer experience, you can cut those rates while protecting your business from fraud

Read more
Accountancy Firms

What keeps accountants awake at night?

The entire accounting industry is changing. For some that means new opportunities for growth and diversification; but for others the change can be traumatic.

Read more
Industry News

The best YouTube channels for Cyber Security

Watch and learn with our pick of the 14 best YouTube channels to follow if you’re serious about cyber security

Read more
Financial Services

Will this be the year of identity?

Passwords are hacked with ease, and MFAs are not the answer. Isn’t it time the biggest companies protect their clients and workforce with an identity-based perimeter?

Read more
Accountancy Firms

The beginner’s guide to Knowing Your Customer (KYC)

New to KYC? Here’s your at-a-glance guide to the ins and outs of Knowing Your Customer.

Read more
Financial Services

Challenger banks: they shouldn’t stand alone

The FCA reports that the UK’s top challenger banks still don’t do enough to eliminate identity theft and cyber fraud – but there’s nothing but silence from the companies that are supposed to be protecting them.

Read more
Vehicle Finance

How vehicle finance companies can win in 2023

The next year is going to be a tough one, with fewer car registrations than ever. Follow our tips to make the most of every customer and drive ahead of the competition.

Read more
Financial Services

How will Consumer Finance be affected in the Recession of 2023?

Some predict a bumper year for consumer finance; other suggest the industry will suffer. Either way recessions can wreak havoc – but here are some ways you can navigate the choppy waters ahead.

Read more
Estate Agents

How Estate Agents can beat the doom and gloom of 2023

Wherever you look the experts are predicting an annus horribilis for Estate Agents next year. But we’ve unearthed some ways you can beat the property market slump and thrive next year

Read more
Legal Services

How Law Firms can survive – and thrive – in a recession

Conventional wisdom predicts that legal firms do well in a recession. But that’s not always the case – unless you follow our top five tips for 2023

Read more
Accountancy Firms

2023: by the numbers - Top three trends to help Accountancy Firms thrive in 2023

Well, 2022 was a bit of a hellscape, wasn’t it? Recessions, political merry-go-rounds, Royal dramas, problematic world cups, and the ever-present ghost at the feast that is Brexit have all left their mark on the

Read more
Financial Services

Why Banks Need To Start Taking Ownership

There are many reasons why elite sports stars can end up poor and homeless. Drug habits, concussions, bad investments, you name it. But Cindy Brown is different.

Read more
Industry News

ID Verification With Face Matching

The safest, fastest and most trustworthy onboarding process to verify your customer’s identity.

Read more
Industry News

Biometrics - The Future Of Customer Onboarding

The best customer onboarding experience… and the best defence against digital fraud.

Read more
Financial Services

The Seamless Paradox

Digital-first banks attract customers with no-fee accounts and simple, seamless setups. But their appeal to fraudsters means the more seamless they get, the more dangerous they become.

Read more
Industry News

The Human Cost Of Identity Theft

The myth persists that identity theft is a relatively harmless, victimless crime aimed mostly at the elderly and vulnerable… but the data doesn’t agree.

Read more
Legal Services

Legal Stimulants

Our complex world and its resultant threats to businesses mean General Counsel and legal firms are getting less sleep than ever. But there’s more to it than just risk: finding the right balance can give in-house

Read more
Accountancy Firms

Is Our Mission Impossible?

So much of the world is under threat from scammers, bad actors – and governments that give them shelter. But we can defeat the bad guys if the good guys band together.

Read more
Financial Services

Everything you need to know about Knowing Your Customer

KYC is an important part of protecting yourself – and your customers – from fraud, regulatory breaches and bad actors. Luckily APLYiD makes KYC compliance quick, seamless and effective.

Read more
Accountancy Firms

2022: A perfect storm for identity fraud

Imagine returning from a well-earned holiday and putting your key in your front door only to find the locks have been changed…. then a stranger opens the door and asks who you are.

Read more

Contact us today