Why is Plurilock’s™ MFA solution better a phone-based MFA solution like SMS OTP codes?

Plurilock authentication is invisible to users, more cost-effective, and more secure than MFA that is achieved using one-time codes delivered via SMS or authenticator apps.

Most of our customers have found the use of phone-based MFA to be a challenging strategy, for a variety of reasons.

In bring-your-own-device (BYOD) situations, the number and variety of phones to support is often daunting, and the security soundness of any particular user’s phone may be in question without the use of corporate device management systems—at which users often balk. On the other hand, moving beyond BYOD implies the purchase and distribution of a fleet of phone devices, which is often cost-prohibitive.

Even when a fleet of phones can be deployed and managed appropriately, the provision of one-time codes via phone tends to frustrate users and to negatively impact productivity.

Perhaps the largest problem with phone-based MFA is that it is often insecure. The global SMS system was designed decades before security became the concern that it is today, with SMS data often being sent and stored in cleartext and phone identities like SIMs often being easy to steal through social engineering attacks. Phones themselves are often easy to steal and compromise, even when protected by fingerprint scanners, which can be defeated using methods demonstrated in a large number of YouTube videos.

Plurilock ADAPT™, on the other hand, uses behavioral-biometric, environmental, and contextual data in the background to confirm identity in ways that are nearly impossible to steal or impersonate, enabling users to log in with only their username and password in most cases, without the need to perform additional steps. The total solution cost of Plurilock ADAPT is often orders of magnitude lower than phone-based solutions in the final analysis.