ndly approach that might permit its 130,000 customers to securely work wherever, from any gadget, with out friction. By leveraging its personal Duo Passwordlessthe group was capable of get rid of phishable multi-factor authentication elements, enhance usability and productiveness, cut back authentication actions by 93%, and safe its workforce from wherever.
At Cisco, securing our office for the longer term means repeatedly adapting to technological developments and staying forward of the menace panorama. Leveraging our personal suite of safety merchandise, together with Duo, has been key in serving to us try this.
When most of our workforce labored remotely throughout the pandemic, we carried out Duo Past and moved from a standard network-based perimeter and VPN mannequin to a zero-trust framework in order that customers might securely work wherever, from any gadget, with out friction.
Right this moment, our zero-trust journey continues as we try to satisfy the safety wants of as we speak whereas adapting for what’s subsequent with Duo Passwordless. Identification is now the perimeter— the primary line of protection towards cyber threats. With most knowledge breaches coming from weak or stolen credentials, it’s clear that the longer term requires passwordless authentication.
The issue with passwords
To place it merely, passwords are a straightforward goal for hackers. As soon as the gold commonplace for shielding delicate info, passwords at the moment are outdated and susceptible within the ever-evolving menace panorama. They’re extremely prone to phishing assaults, will be simply forgotten, and sometimes result in consumer frustration that brings an inflow of password-related assist desk tickets to IT groups.
When tormented by password fatigue, customers are inclined to make use of weak, reused, or solely barely modified passwords throughout completely different accounts. Good password administration is tough and tough to implement, and previous to utilizing Duo Passwordless, Cisco IT struggled to handle these challenges throughout a large workforce spanning greater than 130,000 customers.
As a big firm and a pacesetter in expertise, a compromise in our safety can have a significant affect on our enterprise and our innovation. If attackers acquire delicate info reminiscent of supply code, inner system particulars, buyer knowledge, or mental property, it not solely places our enterprise and workers in danger, however the clients who depend on our expertise. We wanted to adapt our strategy to authentication to mitigate the password associated safety dangers to our enterprise and challenges confronted by our workers and help groups.
Conventional multi-factor authentication (MFA) is now not ample
Authentication has advanced as cybercrime has turn into increasingly more subtle. We began with “one thing you understand,” or a username and password. We added MFA, which mixes “one thing you understand” with “one thing you’ve” or “are” like a tool or fingerprint. Whereas stronger than a username and password alone, the “one thing you understand” issue of a password remained prone to vulnerabilities.
The transfer to passwordless: specializing in safety and consumer expertise
We started working intently with the Duo product group to take a user-friendly, zero belief strategy that not solely enhanced safety but additionally improved the consumer expertise. To do that, we carried out Duo Passwordless. It wasn’t nearly bettering safety, however on the identical time cultivating a seamless expertise that might higher serve our clients and workers each now and into the longer term.
While Duo Passwordless continues to be MFA, it takes it a step additional and combines the expertise into one step, making for a smoother consumer expertise. It depends on cryptographic public-private key pairs, using biometrics (reminiscent of fingerprint or facial recognition) or safety keys like YubiKeys to authenticate customers with out the necessity for passwords.
Enhancing Duo as buyer zero
As “buyer zero” for Duo Passwordless, we had the flexibility to check and enhance the expertise by early pilot applications earlier than launch. Utilizing a multi-phased strategy, we began with a small group of IT and safety employees, bettering efficiency and performance by suggestions earlier than step by step increasing to the complete workforce over 10 months. The information gained from preliminary pilot teams and insights into how completely different customers can be impacted helped form our strategy to speaking the modifications with our workforce.
By cautious collaboration between groups throughout our group, Cisco IT Safety and the Safety and Belief Group (S&TO) started driving the path of our passwordless future. My group inside IT Safety served as the principle drivers behind this effort, with S&TO offering change administration help, and IT UX, IT Comms, and IT Analysis & Analytics supporting as wanted. Assist@Cisco additionally performed a job as soon as we shifted to necessary passwordless just for key apps, managing the help course of for our inner customers so service groups might give attention to the operation and enchancment of the product.
Challenges and classes discovered
Whereas the complete rollout has seen excessive ranges of natural workforce enrollment with restricted promotion, there have been some challenges with adoption. Many customers reported preliminary considerations with using biometrics. For instance, Home windows Howdy customers who didn’t log in with biometrics by default, merely didn’t know to set it up. Except particularly instructed, customers on this state of affairs didn’t understand biometrics had been an possibility for them.
To treatment, we centered on worker schooling round how biometrics are used, the place they’re saved, in addition to the worth of shifting to passwordless authentication. As well as, we supplied options to biometrics. For instance, on Home windows, customers can use a PIN. In the event that they don’t like platform-based authenticators, they’ll use a YubiKey with a PIN or setup a passkey on a cell gadget.
Additionally vital to notice, we didn’t initially mandate the transfer to passwordless. Our strategy to encouraging worker adoption and alter was formed by our dedication to delivering one of the best consumer expertise. We wished to ship companies and expertise that acted as a magnet for adoption fairly than a mandate.
Now that we’re additional into our journey, we’ve got began Passwordless Solely enforcement on sure apps. The slower, however at-will transition allowed natural adoption and helped get individuals snug with the brand new expertise prior to creating the observe necessary.
The affect: A safer and productive workforce
Because the passwordless resolution was made accessible to your complete workforce, we’ve seen substantial advantages together with:
- Zero password-related safety incidents
- A frictionless expertise for over 130,000 workers with zero belief safe entry
- Improved usability and productiveness, decreasing authentication actions by 93%
- Enhanced safety by eliminating phishable MFA elements
- Substantial discount in IT time and prices on account of fewer password-related points
The longer term: Continued innovation and enlargement
Whereas there’s a lengthy street forward of a full trade shift away from passwords completely, this has primarily been about altering the expertise for our workforce as we speak and mitigating potential future threats for our enterprise. Making ready for a totally passwordless future is a journey that we proceed to construct and enhance on, together with:
- Enhancing safety and value for our workforce: Our journey started with our implementation of Duo Past and continues with Duo Passwordless, underpinning our present transition to Cisco Safe Entry inside Cisco IT (extra to come back!). Identification safety is a basis for zero belief entry, and Duo is way more than simply MFA.
- Strengthening and evolving our zero-trust structure: The profitable rollouts of our Duo options mixed with the newest rollout of Cisco Safe Entry unlocks even stronger zero belief outcomes with an identify-first SSE.
Study extra about Duo Passwordless Authentication, our journey, and the highly effective mixture of Cisco Safe Entry and Duo. For Cisco workers, learn to arrange passwordless in your Cisco gadget right here.
Further Assets:
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