MFA Has Been Treated as the Gold Standard, But the Threat Landscape Has Changed

The industry treats MFA as “the gold standard.”

It isn’t, and just like all point-in-time authentication solutions, is obsolete.

Authentication Verifies Access — Not the Human Behind the Transaction

SMS codes, push notifications, authenticator apps, passcodes and tokens don’t prove who is behind a transaction. They only prove access to a proxy, a device, channel, or session that can be stolen, replayed, or socially engineered.

Why Legacy MFA Fails Against Modern Fraud and Synthetic Identity Attacks

That distinction matters more than ever.

Today’s attackers don’t guess passwords, they impersonate humans (there are 3million+ synthetic identities in the UK alone!) They exploit SIM swaps, token replay, consent fatigue, session hijacking, and now synthetic voice and AI-driven social engineering. In this environment, proxy credentials fail at scale.

The Fundamental Flaw in MFA: Credentials Authenticate Channels, Not People

The core problem is simple:

Credentials authenticate channels. Identity authenticates people.

MFA was designed to add friction to password misuse, not to deliver irrefutable proof of human identity and transaction integrity. As fraud has become automated and AI-assisted, that design limitation has been fully exposed.

What True Human Identity Verification Must Prove in Real Time

True identity assurance must answer three questions, in real time:

• Is there a real human present?
• Is it the right human?
• Can this assertion be cryptographically and legally defended?

At ValidSoft, we’ve been explicit for years: proxy credentials no longer prove identity.

That’s why our See-Say authentication model binds a real human to a transaction using a layered approach:

• Voice biometric authentication (who is speaking)
• Deepfake and synthetic voice detection (is it real)
• Liveness assurance (is the human present now)
• Cryptographic binding (identity irrevocably tied to the transaction)
• Immutable audit trails (non-repudiation and compliance)

Binding a Real Human to Every Transaction

This is not incremental security. It’s a seismic shift from credential validation to identity and transaction certainty.

In an AI-driven threat landscape, point-in-time authentication and proxy credentials are obsolete. Security leaders must move from “Did a device respond?” to:

“Did the right human authorize this transaction…..and can we prove it? …..in a Court of Law? …….to non-repudiation?…Data immutability ” 

ValidSoft does! Uniquely!

MFA wasn’t the destination.

It was the starting point!