Factors to Consider When Choosing Between Hardware vs. Software Authentication
Every organization and business today needs strong authentication solutions that offer reliable security and are easy to install and deploy. The best authentication solutions are also adaptable to changing needs and simple to manage, giving businesses an edge over cybercriminal threats.
However, the main challenge many organizations face in choosing an authentication solution is whether to go for hardware or software authentication. The comparison below highlights the factors to consider when weighing the advantages of using hardware- or software-based solutions, so you can decide what’s best for your business.
Ongoing Management and Maintenance
When choosing between software and hardware authentication solutions, consider the ease of executing ongoing management and maintenance. For instance, when selecting the right technologies for allowing and restricting access within the business building, you may go two ways: the traditional employee ID badges or full software solutions. The solutions should ensure a streamlined, ongoing, and upfront administration process.
If considering ID badges for employee recognition, you can integrate them with technologies like on-premise ID-scanning from OCR Studio to improve performance. Otherwise, you may go for a full-software approach that promises several benefits, like eliminating the administrative burden of broken or lost tokens. Additionally, software solutions allow for seamless update processes, where business owners can change user privileges and make other changes wirelessly, regardless of where the device or user is located.
Organizations often deploy hardware and software solutions to manage and maintain different groups and use cases. Having both working simultaneously can optimize performance and improve business development.
Deployment
Software-based authentication solutions offer better advantages when it comes to deployment efforts. You won’t need to mail tokens with software-based authentication, as the process doesn’t use physical tokens. This eliminates shipment time, missed deliveries, and the potential for routing delays.
If you opt for the advanced authentication solutions featuring over-the-air deployment, you can save time and simplify the overall deployment efforts. You’ll also offload the bulk of setup tasks from the security administrators as the software solutions are designed to equip end users with self-activation capabilities.
While hardware-based authentication solutions are still useful in different instances, they’re becoming more cumbersome, especially as technology advances. For instance, it’s easier for banks to use strong authentication for their online consumers than to distribute physical tokens. This is because distributing physical tokens can be too costly, and taking that route would pressurize your consumers to be much more feasible.
Security Concerns
The main purpose of authentication is to improve security. If you were to ignore everything else, ensure that the authentication solution you choose offers optimal security capabilities for your business. Both hardware and software authentication solutions can guard against several security threats, including hacking and phishing, but you must ensure proper deployment to enjoy optimal protection.
Generally, a purpose-built hardware solution often offers better authentication capabilities and the highest degree of security, even though the cases vary based on specific location and how the solution is employed. Physical authentication solutions add a new layer of defense that software solutions lack, making it harder for cybercriminals to complete their executions.
Setting up a secure authentication protocol can be daunting even for the most experienced organizations. However, you can easily arrive at a favorable decision by considering the factors that matter the most, such as ongoing management and maintenance, deployment, and security. If one solution doesn’t seem enough, it’s best to mix both hardware and software-based solutions for satisfactory results.