Bringing MFA to the Systems Everyone Forgot

Why Universal MFA Matters and How Silverfort Makes It Real

As multi-factor authentication (MFA) becomes a security cornerstone — with even cyber-insurance and compliance frameworks demanding its use across all access paths — enterprises are confronting a stubborn reality: many critical systems simply can’t be protected by traditional MFA. Legacy applications, command-line tools, infrastructure services, and non-modern authentication protocols lack native support for MFA, leaving blind spots that attackers routinely exploit. This is where Silverfort’s approach stands out.

The Problem: Incomplete MFA Coverage

Modern identity and access management (IAM) solutions typically enforce MFA only where the application or service has built-in support — primarily cloud apps or web SSO flows. But enterprise estates are hybrid: on-prem Active Directory, homegrown systems, OT/industrial control systems, command-line interfaces like SSH and RDP, file shares, databases, tier-1 administration tools and service accounts may all use protocols like Kerberos, NTLM, LDAP and others that don’t understand MFA natively. As a result, large swathes of critical access paths — exactly where attackers pivot after compromising a credential — remain unprotected.

Traditional means to extend MFA — agents, proxies, application rewrites — create operational complexity, require code changes, or simply aren’t feasible at scale. Many organizations end up with a patchwork of protections that still leave exploitable gaps.

Silverfort’s Universal MFA: Coverage Without Compromise

Silverfort’s Identity Security Platform confronts these gaps head-on with a universal, agentless MFA enforcement layer that sits alongside existing IAM infrastructure. At its core are a few key architectural principles:

Agentless, Proxyless Enforcement

Silverfort doesn’t require deploying agents on every server or rewriting applications to accept MFA calls. Instead, it natively integrates with identity systems — particularly Active Directory and other cloud directories (Azure AD, Okta, Ping, etc.) — to monitor authentication traffic in real time and enforce MFA where policy dictates.

Protocol-Independent MFA Enforcement

Because Silverfort intercepts and analyzes authentication events at the identity layer — including Kerberos, NTLM, and LDAP — it can trigger MFA every time a credential is used, regardless of whether the accessing system was ever built for modern MFA. This allows protection of legacy apps, homegrown services, administrative tools, and even privileged command-line interfaces like PowerShell or PsExec.

Unified Policies Across Hybrid Environments

The platform allows security teams to define adaptive, context-aware MFA policies based on risk signals — such as user behavior, device posture, and asset sensitivity — and enforce them consistently across cloud, on-prem, and hybrid estates. This is significantly more flexible and scalable than the static, siloed MFA policies of traditional providers.

Leverage Your Existing MFA Stack

Rather than replacing MFA products you already have, Silverfort can augment and extend them, including integration with identity providers and MFA vendors like Okta or Microsoft. When a risk-based policy triggers MFA, Silverfort calls through to the existing MFA solution, providing a consistent authentication experience without disruptive changes.

Real-World Impact: Securing the “Unprotectable”

In practice, Silverfort closes gaps that many organizations struggle with:

Legacy and homegrown applications: These often lack modern authentication frameworks — Silverfort applies MFA without code changes.

Command-line and admin tools: MFA on interactive access, remote shells, and admin utilities stops lateral movement and credential misuse.

Infrastructure and OT systems: Systems not designed for MFA can now become part of a secure, adaptive authentication posture.

Service accounts and non-human identities: These previously invisible authentication paths are now tracked and governed under unified MFA policies.

Organizations that have deployed Silverfort often discover thousands of unprotected identities and paths that were previously invisible, proving that MFA gaps aren’t theoretical — they’re operational risk.

Why It Matters Now

Today’s threat landscape — with credential theft, ransomware and lateral movement at the center of most breaches — demands no blind spots in authentication security. Regulatory and insurance frameworks increasingly mandate MFA across all access vectors, not just cloud apps. By extending MFA to “systems everyone forgot” without heavy operational overhead or disruptive migrations, Silverfort enables enterprises to finally close the identity security gaps that attackers love most.

In short: universal MFA isn’t just a buzzword — it’s a practical imperative — and Silverfort has architected a way to make it real.