As we start to settle into this new decade government regulations are demanding higher forms of authentication security for many industries. Many businesses in the financial, medical and educational industries are not using properly secured solutions for identifying users. Data breaches have become regular news in technology and security media for a long time, recently the national media has started to report on security breaches that have resulted in a major consumer information losses. However with even slightly stronger forms of authenticating such as out-of-band two-factor authentication these breaches would not be possibly.

Reports like the RSA and PSN data breaches are big news that displays nationwide impact on consumers who have personal information stored on company servers. Although these breaches have been reported the resulting criminal intent has still not yet come forth. Using information stolen from data breaches hackers can gain access to more crucial and confidential information such as financial, medical or education records.

It may be that the trend is pointing towards more and more attacks like the data breaches we have been hearing about in the news lately, prompting the government to step in with regulations to protect consumers, employees and anyone storing personal information on business databases. Also it could be the fact that better forms of authenticating exist such as out-of-band two-factor authentication.

With technology growing rapidly and security being implemented only after the fact, society is left with vulnerable gaps in secure online interaction. With smartphones, tablet PCs and other devices that are constantly connected to the internet becoming a norm in every household this increases the number of victims and points of entry for attackers.

The need for security is at our doorsteps and the government understands society’s grief. Enforced by the Office of Civil Rights, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act or HIPAA provides protection for patient’s personal information and this will not be the last we see of government regulations put in place to protect our confidential data. With more and more of our data being placed online or on networks which can be accessed over the internet, regulations will start to be put in place for almost all industries. Industry regulations will require stronger security when authenticating a user to protect against fraudulent access.

Industries Requiring Stronger Authentication

Healthcare Industry

Educational Industry

Financial Industry

Ecommerce Industry

These industries already have authentication processes and regulations for identifying a customer in person. As technology grows and more industries move online, these authentication processes will receive even stricter with regulations due to the wide accessibility of data. Ecommerce will be an industry seeing many changes soon due to the high amount of fraud that is taking place amongst the ecommerce community.

Although many companies do have security measures put in place for identifying users the fact is that only a required government regulation will push business owners to spend the extra investment. A stronger and more secure system such as out of band two factor authentication processes would be the proper investment for protecting your client’s confidential information.