* Identity management news
Today, I want to offer three quick tidbits about products you should be aware of.
Last issue’s emphasis on children’s toys reminded me that I wanted to update you on how an old – in Internet terms – kid-friendly application was finding new life in the multi-factor authentication market.
I was talking to Jared Pfost, VP of security and product strategy at Biopassword (see “BioPassword learns how you type to provide security management,”), a couple of weeks ago about how BioPassword Enterprise Edition is being implemented by the PARDA Federal Credit Union to combat internal security threats. The credit union is also using BioPassword Internet Edition to protect its 17,000 members, in line with the Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council’s directive to provide stronger authentication for financial services customers. Adding the biometric of keystroke dynamics to the more traditional username/password authentication method is easily accomplished as there is no client software to install, and is easily understood and used by the customer. Maybe more banks and financial institutions should take a look.
In other banking identity news, Gemalto recently announced an agreement with Barclays Bank to offer stronger authentication for online banking customers. The bank will send Gemalto authentication devices to its customers who can put their debit card into the reader to generate a unique one-time password to authenticate their identity at log on – replacing the need for memorable words, phrases or relatives’ maiden names! As an added attraction, the reader device is customized with the bank’s visual corporate identity, and is portable so it can be used at any computer terminal with an Internet connection. Improved security, portability and a marketing tool – all rolled into one!
Finally, NetPro took the opportunity at last week’s Directory Experts Conference to roll out version 3.0 of its RestoreADmin product – a tool that Network World editor John Fontana reported “…can now backup and restore Active Directory’s Configuration Naming Context (CNC), which is the primary repository for configuration information for directory forests. The CNC is replicated to every domain controller in the forest. The new version also lets users rollback existing and deleted objects. In addition, deleted objects can be restored even when a restore operation is not allowed.” Read John’s story for more highlights and visit the RestoreADmin Web site for all the details. I did get to play with this at the show, and it’s a really neat tool that I wish I had had when I was a network manager. A tool that provides online real-time backup and restore of the directory is one that any Windows server administrator could use.
Coming events: Thursday, May 10, 2007 at 11 s.m. (EDT, UTC/GMT-4 hours), Ping Identity presents a webinar: “Federated Identity Management: An Overview of Single Sign-On Standards.” Register now for this look at the history of identity federation, early efforts to address multiple use cases, and the consolidation of those efforts into the two major federation standards in place today. The presentation will also compare and contrast federation standards with user-centric identity approaches such as OpenID.
