Versatile authentication is one of the hot topics in IT – more and more vendors start to support it in some way or another. Versatile, a not that common term, means the ability to flexibly switch between different authentication methods. In practice, versatile authentication solutions shall support at least the following features:
- Flexible use of different authentication methods.
- Simple plug-in of additional authentication methods, e.g. extensibility.
- Flexible interfaces for applications OR integration with existing technologies which interface with other apps.
- Support for step-up authentication and other more advanced approaches.
Other aspects like fallback methods, management support for handling the token logistics and so on are value-adds, depending on the implementation of the versatile authentication technology.
