ndly means that may enable its 130,000 customers to securely work wherever, from any machine, with out friction. By leveraging its personal Duo Passwordless, the crew was capable of remove phishable multi-factor authentication elements, enhance usability and productiveness, scale back authentication actions by 93%, and safe its workforce from wherever.
At Cisco, securing our office for the long run means repeatedly adapting to technological developments and staying forward of the risk 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 applied Duo Past and moved from a standard network-based perimeter and VPN mannequin to a zero-trust framework in order that customers may securely work wherever, from any machine, with out friction.
Right now, our zero-trust journey continues as we attempt to satisfy the safety wants of immediately whereas adapting for what’s subsequent with Duo Passwordless. Identification is now the perimeter— the primary line of protection in opposition to cyber threats. With most knowledge breaches coming from weak or stolen credentials, it’s clear that the long run requires passwordless authentication.
The issue with passwords
To place it merely, passwords are a simple goal for hackers. As soon as the gold commonplace for shielding delicate data, passwords are actually outdated and weak within the ever-evolving risk panorama.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 affected 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 troublesome 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 frontrunner in know-how, a compromise in our safety can have a serious affect on our enterprise and our innovation. If attackers get hold of delicate data akin to supply code, inner system particulars, buyer knowledge, or mental property, it not solely places our enterprise and staff in danger, however the prospects who depend on our know-how. We wanted to adapt our strategy to authentication to mitigate the password associated safety dangers to our enterprise and challenges confronted by our staff and help groups.
Conventional multi-factor authentication (MFA) is now not adequate
Authentication has advanced as cybercrime has develop into an increasing number of 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 may have” 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 crew to take a user-friendly, zero belief strategy that not solely enhanced safety but in addition improved the consumer expertise. To do that, we applied Duo Passwordless. It wasn’t nearly enhancing safety, however on the identical time cultivating a seamless expertise that may higher serve our prospects and staff each now and into the long run.
While Duo Passwordless remains 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 (akin to 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 power to check and enhance the know-how by way of early pilot packages earlier than launch. Utilizing a multi-phased strategy, we began with a small group of IT and safety workers, enhancing efficiency and performance by way of suggestions earlier than step by step increasing to the total workforce over 10 months. The information gained from preliminary pilot teams and insights into how completely different customers could 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 crew 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 task as soon as we shifted to obligatory passwordless just for key apps, managing the help course of for our inner customers so service groups may deal with the operation and enchancment of the product.
Challenges and classes realized
Whereas the total rollout has seen excessive ranges of natural workforce enrollment with restricted promotion, there have been some challenges with adoption. Many customers reported preliminary issues with using biometrics. For instance, Home windows Hiya customers who didn’t log in with biometrics by default, merely didn’t know to set it up. Until particularly informed, customers on this state of affairs didn’t understand biometrics had been an choice for them.
To treatment, we targeted on worker training 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 will use a YubiKey with a PIN or setup a passkey on a cellular machine.
Additionally necessary 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 the most effective consumer expertise. We needed to ship companies and know-how that acted as a magnet for adoption slightly than a mandate.
Now that we’re additional into our journey, now we have began Passwordless Solely enforcement on sure apps. The slower, however at-will transition allowed natural adoption and helped get individuals comfy with the brand new know-how prior to creating the observe obligatory.
The affect: A safer and productive workforce
Because the passwordless answer was made out there to the complete workforce, we’ve seen substantial advantages together with:
- Zero password-related safety incidents
- A frictionless expertise for over 130,000 staff with zero belief safe entry
- Improved usability and productiveness, lowering authentication actions by 93%
- Enhanced safety by eliminating phishable MFA elements
- Substantial discount in IT time and prices as a result 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 solely, this has primarily been about altering the expertise for our workforce immediately 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:
- Bettering safety and usefulness 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 return!). Identification safety is a basis for zero belief entry, and Duo is rather 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 staff, learn to arrange passwordless in your Cisco machine right here.
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