Forrester

Why Read This Report

The strong authentication landscape has undergone tremendous churn in recent years as new mobile-fueled technologies have come online and as RSA, the premier vendor of hardware one-time password (OTP) tokens, experienced a breach. These disruptive trends, along with updated authentication guidance from the US Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council (FFIEC), have driven many clients to ask us which strong authentication methods can meet all of their compliance, risk, cost, and usability requirements. Hard tokens and smartcards remain effective in managing high risk — but their appeal is becoming more selective compared with software OTP tokens and OTPs sent by text message. This report helps technology planners in security take users' newly favored devices, apps, and communications channels into account in designing a mix-and-match strategy for strong authentication.