Author: SatyaDev Addeppally

SatyaDev Addeppally is the Chief Technology Officer at Akku, where he drives technology strategy and product innovation for the company’s enterprise IAM platform. With a hands-on approach and deep technical expertise, he inspires his teams to build solutions that balance security, scalability, and usability. Under his leadership, Akku continues to evolve as a cutting-edge platform capable of competing with global leaders in the IAM space. Before joining Akku, SatyaDev held leadership roles at BPA Technologies, Raqmiyat, Nihilent, and FCS Software Solutions, managing enterprise-scale projects across BFSI, healthcare, ERP, and hospitality domains. His work in application modernization, digital transformation, and enterprise architecture has enabled organizations worldwide to strengthen IT infrastructure and accelerate growth.

The What, Why and How of Two-factor Authentication (2FA): Decoded

Whether or not you know what it is called, you have likely used 2FA at least once in your life online.

Remember the time you tried logging into your email account from a new device and your email service provider sent you an SMS with a PIN (OTP), to re-validate that it was actually you attempting to login? You would have been allowed access to your inbox only after you entered the correct OTP.

Or the time you tried to transfer money to someone through internet banking. Even though you already entered your customer ID and password, your bank’s application would want to make sure that someone else hadn’t stolen your credentials. They do this by sending you an email with a PIN or a link to click on, for additional validation.

This is exactly what 2FA or two-factor authentication solution is all about.

Known by many names – two-factor authentication, two-step authentication, two-step verification or dual factor authentication, 2FA refers to a second level of authentication added on in order to enhance security inherent to a login process. This is in addition to the username and password step, which is relatively susceptible to hacking.

When two or more layers are added to the login authentication process, it’s also known as multi-factor authentication or MFA.

Types of MFA security

A two or multi-factor authentication process typically asks you for ‘something you know’ in the first step, such as your email ID/username and password.

In the second step, it may ask you to authenticate your identity with ‘something you have’ or ‘something you are’.

Something you know – the knowledge factor:

This could be your username and password, as in any ordinary login process, or it could be a PIN.

Something you have – the possession factor:

This traditionally referred to hand-held token items, such as smart cards or Yubikeys embedded with a certificate to identify the user. Nowadays, a ‘possession’ could also be your smartphone, containing an app which sends a push notification or a TOTP. This is especially beneficial since tokens like smart cards are relatively more prone to being lost, stolen or misplaced.

Something you are – the inherence factor:

Biometric authentication could involve the scanning of a biological element that is exclusively yours – such as your fingerprint, hand geometry, retina, iris and so on. Voice recognition can also be used.

Two-factor authentication for your business

If your business relies on highly sensitive data or handles personal data of clients, you need to have an information security management system in place. This is especially crucial these days as several governments are imposing stringent regulations to ensure that the privacy of their citizens is not compromised. Some business standard certifications also require security compliances to certify your business and, therefore, it is important for you to protect sensitive data with more than just single-factor authentication (SFA).

By setting up 2FA or MFA security in all your business applications, you are assured of a higher degree of protection. In this manner, even if somebody does steal, guess or hack a password or even a list of passwords, through a brute force attack, they will be stopped at the second level as they attempt to log in to a specific individual’s account.

Multi-factor authentication solutions by Akku

When your business uses multiple applications, it may be both expensive and difficult to set up and streamline multi-factor authentication in each. That is where Akku comes in, with the promise to address all these concerns once and for all.

Once you opt for Akku, it becomes a common identity provider (IdP) across all your enterprise applications and creates a single sign-on (SSO) page through which your users can access them. Having brought all of your applications to a single platform through the SSO, Akku then seamlessly implements the multi-factor authentication functionality across them all.

With Akku, users can decide to use any of the following options as their second factor for re-validating their identity, giving them the power of choice:

- A push notification delivered to their smartphone through the Akku mobile app

- A time-based OTP (TOTP) which expires in 30 seconds through an authentication app (such as Google authenticator)

A PIN sent through an SMS to their registered mobile number

Interested to know more? Visit www.akku.work or get in touch with us through sales@akku.work

Protecting Your Vault: Safeguard your Data Center with an IAM Solution

At most enterprises, data centers are a repository of information contained within a network of servers from where data is transmitted to other touch points for processing. While these data centers could be cloud-based or on-premise, the security of such business-critical data is of paramount importance.

There could be several vulnerabilities in your network in the form of entry points that seem like they can be ignored. While there are several measures you can implement to physically secure your data center, it takes a lot more to secure remote or even on-premise servers from virtual attacks. An effective data center security solution will allow you to intuitively monitor all the entry points for possible attacks and ensure that you are protected against any breach.

One major part of the solution is the implementation of an Identity and Access Management (IAM) solution as part of your security system.

Staying Protected Online using an Identity and Access Management Solution

The two biggest focus areas for any security solution are authentication and authorization. Although there are overlaps in the usage of the two terms, there are distinct in the way they allow access of data.

Authentication determines if the user trying to enter a system is in fact who he/she is claiming to be, while authorization determines whether the user has the permission to access the data or application that he/she is attempting to access.

A comprehensive IAM solution should be able to intelligently allow you to do both by acting as the Identity Provider (IdP) for your cloud, on-premise or hybrid network and interact with the servers in the data centers to check for authentication and authorization using advanced, yet easy to implement, system architectures.

The Akku Solution

CloudNow’s Akku is an enterprise-grade IAM solution that plays this role perfectly using its custom SAML to provide a robust Single Sign-on (SSO) solution, or to integrate with an SSO solution already in place for your other applications. As an IdP, Akku communicates with the server at the time of login to carry out authentication and validate authorization.

By using a high-end security solution, you can effectively control access to your network and data center and reduce the number of resources dedicated to data center security.

Akku also removes any need for any middleware which could otherwise complicate or even corrupt the security system.

The implementation of an efficient and cost-effective security solution like Akku can go a long way in allowing you to focus on improving the operational efficiency of your organization instead of being caught up with the security threats to your data.

A Single Login To Access All Your Applications

Logging on to different applications using different user credentials every single time is frustrating, isn’t it? The use of a Single Sign On (SSO) application makes it easy to access all your applications with just a single set of login credentials. The SSO acts as the identity provider – a common platform to handle user identity and access across all your applications – and also provides authentication, authorization and access control.

Single Sign On solution offers a secure and convenient way to manage access credentials and user provisioning.

Advantages of Single Sign On (SSO)

Reduce Your Help Desk Costs

Gartner’s research says that about 50% of all calls made to help desks are requests for resetting passwords. In this scenario, deploying a Single Sign On application reduces the time, effort and cost spent by your help desk, resulting in savings for your organization.

User Experience

Through automated login using Single Sign On, users can switch between applications without having to login to each applications each time. This saves employee time and increases productivity.

Reduce Password Fatigue

Users don’t need to remember and manage multiple passwords – SSO reduces the number of passwords to one and makes it much simpler to remember and manage.

Easier Accounts Management

SSO gives clear visibility on what access is permitted for whom. It also helps in improving the speed of adding and disabling the accounts of outgoing employees.

Right Access To The Right People

Admin users can provide or deny access to specific users. For instance, if a particular user in a department wants an application to work on the admin can give access only to that person instead of giving it to the team which could result in confusion.

How does it work?

An SSO acts as an identity provider, acting as a common platform to manage identity and access rules across all of an organization’s cloud apps. When a user connects to the service provider to authenticate their identity, it transfers authentication to the identity provider. The identity provider validates the user’s credentials, and then sends a SAML token to the service provider for accessing the application.

Akku packs a powerful Single Sign On function whose customized SAML enables you to integrate a highly secure Single Sign On (SSO) with any cloud or in-house application, developed on any platform, including support for your intranet.

So, why continue to be frustrated with multiple passwords and multiple user accounts to access multiple applications? Make access easier for users and control easier for administrators with Akku.