September - 2013 - issue > View Point
Strong Authentication in Consumer World: The Time is Now
Piyush Bhatnagar
Founder & CEO-Authomate Inc.
Tremendous Growth
Last 20 years have seen a tremendous growth in technology and computing. What used to be experimental technology for the selected few to try and admire, is now mainstream. Most people today have Internet access and have online accounts to multiple service providers. Many have more than one email account and access online bank accounts. Today existing worldwide emails exceed 3.5 billion in number with over 150 billion email messages sent across each day. This unprecedented growth of the Internet has spurred demand for secure, convenient and private access to the Internet, both for consumers as well as corporate entities. The ubiquitous access to online resources has also led to identity theft and billions of dollars of loss to consumers and corporations.
According to Symantec, over 70 percent of these emails are spam and according to Dr Dobbs, about 500 million of these emails per day are phishing attempts. Last year alone there were 11.1 million Americans who were victims of identity theft leading to more than $54 billion dollar in losses, which was an increase of 34 percent from the previous year. A large part of this increase is due to online fraud. Besides the monetary loss, consumers lose confidence and are less likely to conduct online transactions.
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