Anna Forrester
A survey by Dell indicates the need for agencies to adopt a context-aware approach to security to avoid the potential risks in the usual password-centric approach as users experience password overload, according to company executive Paul Christman.
Christman, vice president for the public sector business in Dell’s software group, wrote in a blog entry posted Sept. 30 that password authentication measures can affect user productivity and create risk due to the effort of managing multiple logins.
He said context-aware security works to ease the burden on users through the use of risk scores based on information from identity and access management tools and other sources in order to trigger additional layers of security as needed.
The survey also found that 97 percent of the federal respondents see potential benefits to context-aware security such as real-time adaptability to changing security needs, visibility during risk assessments and ability to evaluate threats based on the potential level of harm.
Christman noted that Dell’s Security Analytics Engine works to support context-aware security.
