Digitalization of banking and commerce was progressing at pace before the pandemic, but COVID-19 catalyzed consumers and businesses to adopt digital services faster than even its greatest proponents had expected. Now, having become accustomed to this convenient way of transacting, most people are likely to continue with this new way of banking and shopping when life approaches something like normality.

Let’s get philosophical for a second, even at the risk of sounding unoriginal. Because, honestly, no-one’s gone on to say this better than Heraclitus himself once did: “Change is the only constant in life.”

In September 2018, CREALOGIX launched a digital banking authentication solution based on a mobile app-based push procedure from Entersekt. Since then, the SaaS application has been used over a million times

There are many examples of regulations that guide securing online and mobile banking through strong authentication. These examples cover a vast range of countries and banking sectors, but some prescriptions for strong authentication came up time and again.

Authentication is evolving apace with more people using more services across more networks and channels than ever before. We take a look at the evolution of authentication through the ages.

Passwords as authenticators pose one of the greatest threats to cybersecurity today. In fact, they’re the root cause of over 80% of data breaches. User-generated passwords tend to be weak and predictable (up to 51% of passwords are re-used). OTPs, too, run the risk of being intercepted. Realistically, no password on its own is truly secure – we’ve known that for years, though.

Let me begin with a short story, a true story. A good friend of mine’s house was recently broken into. He was asleep in bed when this event took place, and he heard nothing. In fact, when he got up in the morning, he didn’t even notice at first that the event had taken place, such was the subtlety of the break-in. The thief had managed to break a door lock, opening the door without making much sound at all. The technique was to snap off the front of the lock and use a screwdriver to open the door: very quiet and very quick.

Despite the rise in popularity of digital customer engagement tools, research has indicated that call centers are alive and well. While Forrester suggests that they’re turned to primarily for escalation purposes, a special report published as late as last year indicated that over 70% of respondents – including young adults – preferred phone calls as their go-to channel for customer service. And it’s easy to see why: after face-to-face engagements, voice interactions are the next best way to get one-on-one attention.

The digitalization of banking has reached an inflection point, with Microsoft’s CEO Satya Nadella saying he’s “seen two years’ worth of digital transformation in two months.”

Years of large-scale, and much-publicized, data theft has us all feeling there’s a target on our back. With the number of online services increasing rapidly, we’re sharing and using our personal details more than ever before. A side effect of this rapid growth in personal information sharing is that we know our personal details are out there in the digital wild, probably being shared among hackers, and sold by crime syndicates.