The market for multi-factor authentication (MFA) technologies has been growing steadily as businesses and customers realize the weaknesses of relying on passwords alone. This technology used to be too expensive and burdensome to deploy to be cost-effective for mid-market businesses and the solution providers that serve them, but new cloud-managed MFA solutions are changing that dynamic. WatchGuard Director of Product Management Himanshu Verma recently wrote a guest article for Channel Vision Magazine explaining why cloud-based MFA is well-positioned to both meet customer security needs and present VARs and MSSPs with an opportunity for easy, scalable and profitable sales. The first and most obvious benefit of cloud-based MFA is that it eliminates the most common security vulnerability that hackers abuse – passwords. The latest Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report found that 58 percent of data breach victims are small to mid-market companies, and the most common cause of breaches are stolen or misplaced passwords. But the biggest advantage cloud-based MFA offers for VARs and MSSPs is low administrative cost and complexity. Here’s an excerpt from Himanshu’s article explaining why: Most cloud-based MFA solutions require little to no upfront investment for deployment, management and reporting infrastructure. This makes them scalable and always available, while also improving the service’s performance. With cloud-based MFA, the management process can be so streamlined that end users without security staff can administer their own solutions if they’re not already working with a solution provider to do it for them. Cloud-based MFA can simplify a previously complex service without the use of expensive hardware, allowing VARs and MSSPs to offer MFA without the need to increase their staff and keep their costs in check in regard to technical support and helpdesk services. Cloud-based MFA also offers other benefits that are a natural fit for solution providers, including a smooth end-user experience, scalability, and the ability to create easy add-on or upsell opportunities. Read about all of these benefits in detail in Himanshu’s article in Channel Vision Magazine. To address the need for better password security and more accessible MFA in the mid-market, WatchGuard recently released AuthPoint, a cloud-based MFA solution that’s designed from the ground up to meet the needs of midsized and distributed enterprises and the VARs and MSSPs that serve them. You can learn more about AuthPoint here on Secplicity or read the white paper here. Robinson Distribution is an authorized distributor for WatchGuard Reference: Article  provided by WatchGuard Secplicity