Security and UX, Growing Together
Looking ahead, The Motley Fool plans to implement social logins to give its users more options for frictionless authentication. So far, the authentication transition has been seamless for users. “It’s the same user experience, maybe a little prettier,” Torgerson says, “But on the back end, under the hood, it’s a bit more robust.”
Meanwhile, the company is making good use of Auth0’s Brute Force Protection. “We went through a pretty extended period, over a month, where we were getting hit with password spray attacks,” Torgerson says. He estimates that there were 20 such attempts, “but, thankfully, they were all failures.” Auth0’s monitoring of the incidents put the team at ease. “It was nice to know, (a) that it was happening, and (b) that we had something we could do about it. With our old system it was just a black box.”
On its mission to make the world smarter, happier, and richer, The Motley Fool is elevating its security profile while streamlining the user experience. Says Torgerson, “we wanted simple, secure authentication, so that’s why we chose Auth0.”
“It was nice to know, (a) that [an attack] was happening, and (b) that we had something we could do about it. With our old system it was just a black box.”

Aaron TorgersonPrincipal Software Engineer