Market Overview: Strong Authentication For Enterprises In 2008

Security professionals have long known that passwords are no longer sufficient to act as the sole means of gatekeeping access to enterprise network and data resources. Increasingly, they're putting that knowledge into action: More than half of the enterprises surveyed in Forrester's Enterprise And SMB Security Survey, North America And Europe, Q3 2007 have either implemented strong authentication at desktop logon or are planning to start or finish such a project in 2008. While strong multifactor authentication certainly improves security, what's less clear is what end users will accept as a convenient and usable second factor. Reflecting the real-world difficulties security managers have had in keeping users happy with the choice of strong authentication, the vendor landscape is complex and fragmented. Vendors will continue to expand their product lines until enterprise adoption of identity management, including strong authentication, becomes more widespread in the coming years.