Introducing Duo Security: Two-Factor Authentication Made Easy
Since starting Duo, the question we've gotten most often is: Why another two-factor auth company?
Because nothing else stops attackers in their tracks like strong authentication — if it can be made easy. When the Gartner analyst team asked “If an organization were to spend $100 a year more per employee where should it spend it to get the greatest improvement in security?”, they had no problem arriving at the answer: “strong authentication.” But the spread of two-factor authentication has been hindered by the cost, complexity, and poor user experience of such products over the last 20 years. At Duo, we’re bringing decades of commercial and research experience in enterprise, service provider, mobile, and consumer Internet security to solve the challenges in adopting two-factor authentication. We believe
- Mobile adoption changes everything. A usable second factor of “something you have” is now available to anyone with a mobile phone – and today’s smartphones are more capable and better networked than laptops were just 5 years ago!
- Modern attacks require a dynamic defense. Attackers are innovating faster than overworked admins and static products can address; cloud-delivered security services, deployable at scale, backed by specialized teams are the best way to keep up.
- Usability matters. We aim to frustrate attackers, not users and admins, with solutions that are easy to deploy, manage, and operate.
When your anti-virus, firewall, IPS, host security, and other controls have been bypassed by attackers who have taken over your users' accounts, strong two-factor authentication is your best defense.
Because sometimes it takes a belt AND suspenders to keep from getting de-pantsed!