Trust Anchor in Modern Authentication - White Paper

The increasing proliferation of authentication methods makes it necessary to establish a trust anchor for the various methodologies. It is becoming more and more dangerous to continue using various authentication methods without checking the trust anchor occasionally. Of course you could always use the trust anchor for authentication, but that may not be convenient for users and some applications may not be able to address it. In everyday life it is not always necessary to recur to the highest level of trust. For normal processes intermediate and more convenient solutions can be good enough. You don’t always wave your passport when entering a building or buying a burger, in which case you might rather wave your healthcare card or some cash. We have to keep in mind that malicious intruders may have substantial resources and IT competence when deploying their attacks. Large corporations or institutions are high value targets and need to protect themselves against highly professional attacks.