Time has no limits. It continues to evolve and so as our technical world. With time, men has invented a number of methods for authentication such as documents, seals, tokens, secret questions and many others. Some of these practices still have some existence but they are not that significant when it comes to digital world i.e. internet.
Let’s talk about the basics here. The terms identification and authentication may be used interchangeably but in the core they are totally different. Identification is to claim the identity of a person or a thing and authentication is the act of confirming that identity. Let’s understand this concept with an example.
At the time of creation an online account, you provide your name, dob, email id etc. claiming to be yours. This is a part of identification process. Now when you log into this account you authenticate yourself with this identity.
Now let’s see what are the factors of authentication!
Factors of authentication refers to the variety of ways that can be used for authentication and when it comes to means of authentication there are mainly four categories. Here they are:
Knowledge Factor: This is based on something that you know like a PIN number, passwords, security questions etc.
Ownership factor: Under this method of authentication, people authenticate themselves with something they posses like ID cards, key, tokens or identity cards etc.
Inherence factor : These authentication factors are based on someone’s inherence characteristics for example fingerprints, retinal patterns, signature, DNA patterns etc.
Usage of these Authentication factors !
Based upon the following authentication factors, authentication can be of following two types:
Single factor authentication: when a single form of any authentication element is used to confirm a user identity is then known as single factor authentication such as a password to confirm the user identity. This is no doubt the weakest level of authentication. People share their password with one another which gives unauthorized users an access to your account.
Multi factor authentication: When two or more factors are used for the authentication purpose, it is multi factor authentication then. Multi factor authentication is undeniably an escalated level of security in which user has to present evidence for his or her identity. It is implemented when there are higher need of security. ATM card is a good example of multi factor authentication. Users first need to present something that he has i.e. ATM card and then something he knows(second factor) i.e a PIN number.
Some common examples of authentication that we come across so often :
- Showcasing a photo Id to confirm your identity
- Logging into your social accounts or email.
- Unlocking phones with PIns and passwords.
- Money withdrawal from ATM.
So this is all about authentication. I hope this pretty much cleared your perspectives about it. Share your suggestions in the comments below.
0 comments:
Post a Comment