Account theft is one of the leading forms of identity fraud in the US. If statistics are anything to go by, 33% of US citizens have experienced identity fraud at least one point in their lives, and this number is steadily growing. The only way you can be sure that the accounts you hold for your customers are safe from fraud is by using authentication methods.
This article allows us to share with you the importance of authentication and the best tips that can help you prevent account theft.
The Importance Of Authentication
Knowing who you are interacting with every time is vital for any business. It helps you to trust your customers and have a fruitful business relationship with them. However, knowing the true identity of any person over the internet can be difficult. That is why you need authentication services.
Authentication helps verify that the person you are interacting with is who they say they are. It also reduces the chances of fraudulent people stealing legitimate accounts and using them to commit crimes everywhere. Without authentication, it can be hard to be an effective business in the 21st century.
How To Make The Most From Authenticating To Prevent Account Theft
Having good authentication services is not enough. You need to know how to make these authentication services work well. The following tips will help you make the most of authentication to protect your customers from identity fraud and account theft.
1.Use Facial Recognition To Identify Users
Facial recognition is one of the best ways you can identify someone. It is almost impossible for someone to fake their face. Even in the age of AI tools that mimic an existing individual's face, facial recognition tools can always weed out a fraudulent person from the true owner of an account.
Authentication tools such as Facial Recognition & Liveness Detection do more than just identify the facial features of the owner of an account. They also check for liveness.
Liveness is crucial for facial recognition as it prevents an account thief from using the photo of the actual owner of the account to fool facial recognition software. The combination of facial and liveness detection is always impossible to beat.
2.Phone Number And Email Verification
Many experts in cybersecurity and authentication recommend using secondary methods of verification or multi-factor authentication for authenticating users. Multi-factor authentication helps you use secondary communication methods such as emails and phone calls or texts to verify a user.
When using phone numbers and emails to verify the owner of an account, all you need to do is to send a timed code to the actual numbers and emails you have that belong to the actual owner. If the user does not put in the codes within a reasonable time, then you can be confident that they are not the actual owner of the account.
The safest bet in such a situation would be to restrict access until you are sure that the account's true owner has regained control of the account.
3.Confirm Identities Using Checks From Authoritative Databases
Global databases provide the best records for verifying the identity of account owners. If you are ever suspicious of any account user, you can ask them to provide different data points, which you can check from the databases controlled by reputable agencies.
Working with data from government agencies can be a good way to navigate such a problem. You can even take it a notch higher by confirming records from crime databases to ensure the account user is who they say they are.
4.Using Knowledge-Based Authentication
Do you remember having a club as a child where you could only be allowed in if you knew certain things about the club? That can also be an excellent way of preventing the theft of accounts. Knowledge-based authentication helps you verify the identity of users by asking them questions you have already agreed on or some based on the information you already have on record.
For example, you can ask a user to share some of the SSNs you collected from the user or their birthday. Such information is always hard to guess for an account thief.
5.Continuous Monitoring For Threats
Vigilance is mandatory if you want to be sure that your users are protected from account theft. You allow account thieves to strike whenever you let your guard down. Continuous monitoring and API on your websites and apps can reduce the likelihood of an account thief taking advantage of your weaknesses and stealing an account.
Continuous monitoring might be a little more expensive than your regular protection plans. However, you can agree that it is the best price to pay if you want to be completely vigilant.
Final Thoughts
In a generation where cybercrime and identity theft are constantly increasing, you have a responsibility to put in place the best measures to protect your users' accounts. Authentication can help you be the best custodian of the trust your users have placed in you and keep their accounts safe.
However, you also need to remind your users to avoid common security mistakes such as reusing passwords, sharing computers that have private information, and being careless with their login credentials.
Remember, the only way we can win the fight against identity fraud is through our collective effort!
Comments