Passwords alone are no longer sufficient in today’s security environment. Data breaches, phishing attacks and account takeover, in particular, are on the rise increasingly so for heavily regulated industries like finance, healthcare, and government. These industries handle high-value assets such as financial transactions, patient health records, and sensitive citizen data, making them prime targets for cybercriminals.
This makes strong MFA service a critical layer of defence. However, not all types of MFA are created equal; some are effective, others aren’t, and still others are already antiquated. In high compliance environments, choosing the wrong MFA approach can result not only in security gaps but also in regulatory non-compliance, audit failures, and reputational damage.
What Multi-Factor Authentication Means, and Why You Should Use It
Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) is an access approach that asks for two or more types of verification in order to gain entry. These are of three types:
-
Something you have - passwords, pin codes or the answer to a security question
-
You have something - hardware tokens, smartphone apps or smart cards
-
Something you are - biometrics like fingerprints, facial recognition or iris scans
The concept is easy, even if one layer isn’t secure, unauthorised access is thwarted by the others. MFA significantly reduces the attack surface by preventing attackers from gaining access using compromised credentials alone.
For businesses, and particularly those in regulated sectors, MFA services are as much a best practice as they may be mandatory for aligning to regulations such as HIPAA, PCI-DSS, FINRA or local government frameworks. Increasingly, auditors and regulators expect organisations to demonstrate not just MFA adoption, but the strength, auditability, and resilience of their MFA implementation.
3 Types of Multi-Factor Authentication
OTP-Based MFA
OTP transmitted through SMS, emails or authenticator apps. Although still very popular, OTPs are becoming more and more accessible to fraudsters who use phishing, SIM swapping or social engineering. In regulated industries, OTP-based MFA often fails to meet modern compliance expectations due to its vulnerability to interception and replay attacks.
Push Notification MFA
A request to push a message to the mobile device that requires user consent. Push MFA is better than OTPs for usability, but users can suffer from “MFA fatigue” where they approve fraudulent prompts because of excessive challenge. Attackers increasingly exploit push exhaustion techniques, making this approach risky when deployed without contextual or adaptive controls.
Certificate-Based & Biometric MFA
PKI certificates, device attestation, and biometric recognition combined. That’s the securest perspective, since it cryptographically ties identity to the device and security hygiene posture, & because this isn’t something that can easily be shared or stolen or spoofed.
This approach delivers phishing-resistant authentication and is especially suitable for environments where compliance, non-repudiation, and zero-trust principles are critical.
What Works When Offering MFA in Highly Regulated Industries
For heavily regulated industries such as finance and health care, you need secure, auditable MFA with a great end-user experience:
-
Banking & Finance: MFA based on certificates with device attestation helps stop credential abuse and safeguard financial transactions while meeting regulatory expectations around strong customer authentication and fraud prevention.
-
Healthcare: Employing Biometric MFA for securing patient records so that only authorised people can have access → thus, the insider threats are minimised and compliance with data protection regulations is strengthened.
-
Government: MFA supported by PKI protects sensitive citizen data and critical infrastructure, ensuring compliance with specific regulatory demands and supporting national cybersecurity frameworks.
The DevSecOp best practice is to supplement this with existing IAM (Identity Access Management) systems, incorporating MFA, using cryptography and enabling Risk-Based authentication through the use of behavioural analytics. This ensures that security controls adapt dynamically to user behaviour and risk posture.
Where Traditional MFA Deployments Fall Short
Even MFA rollouts with good intentions will fail if they are dependent on outdated methodologies:
-
SMS OTPs are not safe: Can be intercepted, SIM swapped.
-
Push exhaustion MFA: Victims consent to the attack due to continuous asking for approval.
-
Device binding unavailable: If there is no cryptographic coupling, the credentials may be exposed by sharing or theft.
-
Partial deployment: Lower coverage and audit failures by not integrating MFA with IAM or PKI.
These failures are particularly risky in regulated industries, where failure to comply or breaches can lead to fines, reputational harm and operational downtime. Regulators increasingly expect MFA implementations to be resilient against modern attack vectors, not just present on paper.
The Future: MFA as a Service that Provides Security and Compliance
The new era MFA service includes:
-
Certificate-Based Authentication (CBA): Devices contain cryptographic certificates that securely associate identity.
-
Biometric Integration: Secures user identity based on “who they are” rather than what they know.
-
Risk-based & Adaptive MFA: Analyse the login context, location and device risk to decide if extra authentication is required.
-
Native Integration: Compatible with IAM A/9/N platforms, cloud workloads and enterprise applications.
This method lowers the barrier to entry for your desired users, increases compliance preparedness and counters common attacks such as phishing, account takeover and MFA fatigue, while ensuring seamless access across modern hybrid and cloud environments.
Why eMudhra for MFA in Regulated Industries?
eMudhra offers MFA as a service for business-critical, compliance-centric awareness levels:
-
emMFA: An adaptive and phishing-resistant MFA with certificate and passwordless-based alternatives
-
SecurePass IAM: Seamless integration of MFA with its identity governance and access management capabilities
-
Device-as-Identity Architecture: Cryptographically binds identity to devices for non-repudiable access
-
Compliance & Audit Ready: Comprehensive documentation, audit trails and regulatory focus
Raising the Bar for Secure Identity at the Workplace. Delivering strong, two-factor authentication to enterprise applications, eMudhra helps finance, healthcare, government and other highly-regulated industries maintain MFA security and business continuity while meeting evolving regulatory mandates.
Conclusion
Passwords are inadequate by themselves, it turns out. Organisations need to start replacing their mobile device management (MDM) and enterprise mobility management (EMM) tools with modern multi-factor authentication (MFA) solutions which offer more than mere OTPs and push notifications using the latest class of biometric, certificate-based authentication.
By using flexible, PKI-empowered MFA, organisations would be able to:
-
Lower your phishing and credential theft risk
-
Achieve regulatory compliance
-
Empower your employees, partners, and machines with secure access
-
Maintain business agility and growth
eMudhra’s MFA solutions offer the strong, legally compliant and user-friendly multi-factor authentication that Organizations governed by regulations depend on to remain secure.
