The biggest security risk that most businesses face isn’t technical – it’s employees and their poor password practices. To help small and mid-market businesses mitigate this risk, WatchGuard has launched AuthPoint, a multi-factor authentication service managed through the cloud and designed to meet the specific needs of mid-market and smaller companies. HostingAdvice.com recently covered the launch of AuthPoint and awarded the product their Developers’ Choice Award for “delivering an easy-to-implement, enterprise-grade MFA solution at prices accessible to any business.”
According to Verizon’s 2017 Data Breach Investigation Report, 81% of data breaches in 2017 involved stolen or weak passwords. This is not surprising when you realize that the average user has 90 online accounts – far too many to remember long, complex and secure passwords for each. To further understand this issue, WatchGuard commissioned a survey of business owners and IT managers at companies with less than 1,000 employees and found that over 80% of them wanted technology solutions like MFA to enforce good password practices, but they were concerned with the cost, complexity and difficulty of deployment associated with MFA products. Most felt that MFA solutions were designed for larger enterprises and would be too cumbersome to manage with their limited IT resources.
In contrast, WatchGuard’s AuthPoint MFA service is affordable, easy to deploy, and incredibly scalable. It’s managed through WatchGuard Cloud so there is no lengthy on-premise installation or deployment process, and management and scaling is simple. Deployment takes a few days maximum and the service costs a few dollars per user per month. Here is an excerpt from the HostingAdvice.com article discussing AuthPoint’s third-party integrations and how they make the product more versatile.
WatchGuard’s ecosystem includes dozens of third-party integrations with AuthPoint. This allows companies to mandate that users undergo the authentication process before accessing sensitive cloud applications, VPNs, and networks. Moreover, AuthPoint supports the SAML standard, allowing users to log on once to access a full range of applications and services.
AuthPoint fits into WatchGuard’s mission of providing simple solutions to complex security issues for mid-market organizations and is the first of many future services that will leverage the WatchGuard Cloud for more streamlined management and deployment. Read the full article about AuthPoint on HostingAdvice.com, see the complete results of WatchGuard’s survey on password practices and opinions on MFA here, and learn more about AuthPoint here.