Residential Technology Information Security Strong Authentication

As ID theft becomes rampant in the US, this paper takes up the critical concern of identity theft to provide an understanding of a hybrid method of authentication. There have been over 10 million victims of ID theft in America, over 150 million individual person records breached. There is also the FBI report mortgage fraud to talk about. Therefore, the paper identifies the need for more robust methods of identifying customers and partners in a manner that authentication is appropriate and useful. Authentication can be confirmed with the use of one of these factors or a combination of more - something one knows (such as a password), something one has (such as a token or certificate), and/or something one is (associated with biometrics). Authentication is usually done with logon passwords because knowledge of the password is assumed as a guarantee of authenticity of the user. But the weakness here is that when it comes to significant transactions (such as the exchange of money or Personally Identifiable Information - PII), it is harmful in case the passwords is stolen, accidentally revealed, or forgotten. This paper discusses the vulnerabilities of logon passwords and suggests the need for a more stringent authentication. The paper suggests use of multiple factors (2 or 3 factors in combination) as the preferred method of strong authentication.