A Reliable Mobile OTP Cloud Authentication

With security breaches increasing day in day out, users are no longer expected to go through simple sign-up/in. Several webs and mobile app development companies are found looking for ways to build identity and access management functionality for their space. But it turns out extremely hard and expensive. So what can be the solution here?

Cloud computing is pretty much in vogue these days. Comprising dynamic scalability and usage of virtualized resources, the cloud seems one of the best service providers on the internet. Over recent years, disruptive technology has changed everyone’s perspective of infrastructure architectures, development models and software delivery. And if we see from the security point of view, several uncharted risks and challenges have been removed like never before.

Even after so much advancement in technology companies seem to be scared of moving their important information to the cloud. Of course, here data is safe – both at the provider’s site and during transmission between the host and server. Also, it is very important to have a secure authentication process. If someone has already figured out your password, even the best encryption algorithm won’t be able to protect it.

Since cloud computing is a quite new subject, most of the cloud providers have not yet tightened up their security and still use insecure or complicated login methods. Apart from being secure enough to protect the data, the authentication part must be easy and flexible for millions of people who are using it.

What’s the actual problem?

One of the most common forms used today is using static passwords which cause a plethora of security problems. Apart from this users generally prefer non-complex passwords and rarely change which becomes quite easy to crack. Cloud computing technology came up with one time passwords and two-way authentication to tighten the security.

A secure mobile OTP authentication is said when accessing cloud service providers to provide user login information in terms of username and password. As I said before, login information can be easily hacked and cracked by another party. Also, there is a two-way authentication mode if you don’t want to consider mail confirmation or a one-time password.

One of the prime benefits of using OTP is that it increases the security strength of access control over cloud computing.

Define Mobile OTP Authentication – Popularly known as a one-time password, the authentication method proposes to secure mobile device portability through rapid and secure authentication using mobile devices such as smartphones, Ipads, tablets and so more. Because to facilitate diverse and wide use of services, security is considered as one of the most important to meet advanced portability and user accessibility.

A one-time password is a technological mechanism through which a single-use password is generated and sent to the registered mobile number for the user to access the website – two-factor authentication.

Authentication use cases

Setting up authentication can be quite tricky at times. Right from workplace productivity suites, cloud-based resources, and APIs. Some authentication is done on behalf of a piece of software. One service invokes another service’s API. Most other authentication is based on user populations, including customers, partners, and employees.

Now have you wondered what type of users need to be authenticated:

• Internal users accessing workplace or office producing solutions
• Internal users accessing third-party apps
• Internal users accessing internally built and hosted apps
• Internal users accessing and administering cloud resources directly
• Users making a proxy call to an API (tracking who made the call, and on behalf of which end-user the request was made)
• External users accessing applications

GCP identity management and authentication methods

Cloud identity – An identity as a service (IDaaS) and enterprise mobility management (EMM) product that offers identity services and endpoint administration for G Suite or a stand-alone product. As an administrator, one can Cloud Identity to manage your users, apps, and devices from Central Google Admin Console.

Secure LDAP – The feature of cloud identity and G suite lets employees access LDAP-based apps and infrastructure using their cloud identity credentials. With Secure LDAP, IT teams can use a single cloud-based identity and access management solution to enable employees access to both SaaS and traditional apps/infrastructure.

Cloud identity for customers and partners – CICP is one such platform that is built on top of Firebase authentication providing an end-to-end authentication system for third-party users to access your app and services featuring mobile/web apps, games, and APIs to name a few.

API proxies – Google Cloud API proxies are an abstract layer that fronts for your backend service APIs, providing not just proxy but also a wide range of management and security features such as authentication and validation. Now here Google cloud provides a couple of options: Cloud Endpoints which work extremely well with GCP whereas Apigee Edge works cross-platform and includes enterprise features like rate limiting, quotas analytics and more.

Cloud Identity – Aware proxy – This generally works by verifying user identity and context of a request to access a cloud-based application hosted on GCP. It also determines if a user should be allowed to access the application. As soon as the cloud IAP grants user access to an application or resource they are subject to the fine-grained across controls implemented by the product in use without requiring a VPN. So now when a user tries to access a Cloud IAP-secured resource, Cloud IAP certainly performs authentication and authorization checks like never before.

Context-aware access simply verifies that :

• The user is trusted – they do have a password, authentication strength and there is no abnormal user behavior
• The device is trusted with endpoint verification
• The location is trusted (IP address)

Authenticating against GCP – If you have a recognized identity such as Google account, a service account, a Google group or a cloud identity or G suite identity, authentication is done on a direct basis.

So that’s all for now! Keep watching the space to know more regarding the same.