Presentation

Costs and benefits of strong authentication methods at NREN constituents

Governmental security and privacy guidelines require universities to protect access to some critical information systems by strong authentication methods. Also brute force attacks against user passwords has increased, which calls for better security measures.

A joint project group by Finnish universities has evaluated costs and benefits of using smart cards to access critical services.

Has anything changed since the previous PKI hype? Is strong authentication feasible at all in universities?

The project group recommends starting a program for stepwise evaluating and piloting strong authentication methods for selected services at universities. Costs and benefits should be compared based on services rather than on just different authentication methods.

Better and smarter security controls are needed to make authentication fast, usable, cost effective and more secure.

Speakers

• Urpo Kaila, CSC - Scientific Computing Ltd

Authors

• Urpo Kaila