Traditionally Authenticating users is nothing but validating username and password. Increasingly username and password are not sufficient especially for applications that has sensitive or confidential data. When the username and passwords are not just sufficient, it opens up a whole new world of other options right from One time password to smart card to biometric, traditionally used as second factor or multi factor authentication.

In additional to the second factor authentication, increasingly customers are concerned about phishing attacks and need some assurance that they are dealing with the legitimate web site before giving the password.  Some options in the next level of Authentication are:

One Time Password

Smart Cards

Biometrics

Knowledge based or Risk based

Digital Watermarking of web site

Device Identification

I will discuss more about these authentication options in the next few blog entries.