With the introduction of new ways of authenticating a user such as face recognition, fingerprint scanning, retina scans, and puzzle solving; regular static passwords are becoming less secure and cumbersome for users to remember. When the internet first started, it was exciting to have a strong and hard to guess password for your emails, but now these same types of passwords can be easily guessed and hacked into.

More and more users are using online banking, making financial transactions, purchasing things online on their tablets, and putting sensitive information on the web. Ordinary passwords just arent as secure enough to protect users against malware and hackers. With all these sites and logins that we have, it gets harder and harder to remember all these usernames and passwords. Its not only the security that is of question, but also the costs associated with it. We rarely think about how much it costs to reset a password if its lost, stolen, or forgotten, but someone or some company is always responsible to reset passwords and send users a new one. Industry reports show that an average cost of resetting a password is $30.

One time passwords are a great way to protect users from fraud and malware, especially if combined with an out of band authentication method. Banking and financial institutions use one time passwords to secure their user logins using an out of band authentication method. How it works is a user enters in their login credentials and their mobile phone is sent a one-time password from an outside server. Once the user receives the password on their mobile phone, they enter it into the website they are trying to gain access to and access is granted if the one time password is correct. This is one of the best ways to authenticate a user because the password is sent to a users mobile phone. This is type of authentication method doesnt require a user to carry additional hardware or even install additional software on their cell phone to use which makes it more convenient than hardware tokens. Its also a great way to authenticate a user because most users have their cell phones on them all the time.

Google also uses one-time passwords and sends them to their users if a user is logging in from a separate IP address than the one usually used if the user requests for this service. One time passwords arent just as secure as they used to be even though theyre still widely used and one time passwords are going to be the future of authentication and securing users sensitive data.