Mobile Authentication Marries Security With Convenience

Financial institutions seeking to expand their online and mobile banking offerings to their entire customer base face the age-old challenge of balancing security with usability. Many banks feel trapped: Fail to implement strong authentication and incur the wrath of auditors, or roll it out and risk losing customers that find it too inconvenient to use. These banks often compromise on a method that ticks the boxes on audit sheets but fails to deliver strong security. But several vendors now leverage the near ubiquity of mobile phones to provide a range of secure, effective, and convenient methods of customer authentication. Mobile authentication can be the linchpin that holds together online banking, mobile banking, and mobile payments in a way that marries security with convenience — increasing the chances that banks will heed the advice of their security professionals. To sell all sides on the value of mobile authentication, look for solutions that offer several levels of convenience to make customers happy on the front end and a flexible, modular architecture to ease management on the back end.