Right to reply: Google’s ‘two-step verification’- do we need extra security online?

The market for mobile phone-based authentication products and services will grow significantly over the next four years and could become the de-facto standard for securing cloud-based services such as Google Apps, according to an analyst report from Goode Intelligence.

Goode Intelligence’s analyst report on the market for mobile phone-based authentication products and standards reveals that with the rush to cloud computing services there is an urgent need to strongly authenticate enterprise and consumer end‐users. The mobile phone could be the perfect de facto choice for this.
The report, The Mobile Phone as an Authentication Device – Analysis and Forecasts 2010 – 2014, shows that the key drivers behind this market growth and the adoption of mobile authentication include:
• The move to cloud services that require more agile and scalable authentication services
• The need to offer a flexible and strong authentication solution that can work across platforms and includes Smartphones and tablet computers
• Increased employee mobility which requires secure access to company networks remotely
• An ongoing need to reduce operational costs in organizations
• The requirement to reduce fraud from identity theft and unauthorised access for eCommerce services
• Industry and government regulation including PCI DSS for credit card processing, FFIEC for financial services in the USA, CoCo for UK government interoperability and network access and HIPPA for US healthcare
“Google’s recent announcement on its “Two-Step Verification” service is exactly what the industry needs” said Alan Goode, Managing Director, Goode Intelligence. “It is a vindication of the strengths of mobile phone-based authentication solutions that one of the largest technology companies in the world has chosen to develop a solution that can quickly improve its security posture. Time and time again it has been proven that passwords, on their own, are simply not good enough to authenticate users. A stronger and more flexible approach is needed to meet the growing authentication requirements of the converged and connected world.
“Although we acknowledge that man-in-the-middle (MitM) and man-in-the-browser (MitB) attacks can undermine two-factor authentication we believe that it is the best current solution that ensures users are strongly authenticated into web and cloud services.”
Goode continued “I think Google’s announcement will kick-start the widespread adoption of mobile two-factor authentication and enable the spread of strong authentication outside of the enterprise environment – strong authentication for the masses. We applaud Google for its decision to invest in this solution and to make it freely available. It will also have a significant positive effect on those technology vendors that are currently marketing alternative mobile-phone based authentication solutions. By offering additional services such as Out-Of-Bound (OOB) authentication and/or transaction verification services, these vendors will still offer an attractive solution that will be a credible alternative to Google’s offering.”
Other findings from the report:
• The total number of worldwide users that will use their mobile phone as an authentication device in the eCommerce Sector will increase from 1.1 million in 2010 to just over 31 million by the end of 2014 – an increase of just over 30 million users in that five-year period
• By 2014, almost 114 million unique users will generate nearly $760 million in revenue for technology vendors involved in products and services that enable the mobile phone to become an authentication device
• The growing adoption of Smartphones by corporate and personal users will drive the market for soft-token OTP deployments
• SMS OTP products and services will be the fastest growing area for mobile phone authentication in the next one to two years
www.goodeintelligence.com
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