According to the 2021 Data Breach Investigations Report released by Muzztech,
85% hacking-related breaches leveraged either stolen or weak passwords.
The report further adds,
Social engineering is a common means for cybercriminals to establish a foothold. And employees are making this further easy by using easy-to-crack passwords. Users and IT departments are even often guilty of not changing the default passwords that devices come with and can be easily looked up online. To enhance transaction security and prevent social engineering attacks businesses these days are switching to one-time password from user-generated passwords.
What is One Time Password (OTP)?
One Time Password (OTP) as a secure way to provide access to an application or perform a transaction only one time. Unlike user-generated passwords, an OTP is valid only for a single transaction. The OTP expires automatically after a few minutes after the user has utilized it.
The OTP service helps your business to send one-time passwords to customers in various formats – emails, text messages and voice messages. Your business can trigger the OTP automatically based on the request made by the customers during the transaction or login process. These OTPs are hard to crack and hack due to the randomly generated string of alphanumeric characters. Businesses can implement transaction security by integrating the OTP SMS API with the website, mobile app, and third-party applications.
The OTP services help your enterprise to safeguard business transactions in several ways.
Overcome Shortcomings of Static Passwords and PINs
Many cybersecurity experts these days advise customers never to use certain passwords which are dangerously easy-to-guess. OTPs help your business to protect both customer data and digital transactions by overcoming shortcomings of static passwords or PINs. Many cybersecurity experts these days advise businesses to improve data security and privacy by replacing static passwords/PINs with dynamic and transaction-specific passwords. The OTP service helps your customers use dynamic passwords and implement two-factor authentication.
Keeps Password Valid for a Few Minutes
It expires automatically after a short period despite being used or not used by the customer. Time synchronization techniques are used to expire these passwords after a short period automatically. After the password expires, the customer must request a new OTP to complete or repeat the transaction.
Send Critical Information Timely and Securely
These codes are sent in a time gap of fewer than 10 seconds using the fast and secure SMS APIs. These APIs can be integrated with any application to trigger OTPs at important checkpoints for a secure and reliable access.
Implement Two-Factor Authentication
Two-factor authentications safeguard various business transactions by replacing user-generated passwords with OTP. The security technique enables your business to cross-check the identity of a customer by sending OTP to his or her registered mobile number. It requires the agent to validate his or her identity by submitting the OTP after logging in to the online account using the existing user name and password. In addition to protecting business transactions, the two-factor authorization adds an extra layer of security to the website, mobile apps or enterprise software solution.
