ActivIdentity shows off smart card integration among other product updates

I hadn’t heard a lot from ActivIdentity since the name change a year or so ago. You’ll remember, perhaps, that in 2005 ActiveCard, the world’s biggest smart card vendor, merged with Protocom Development Systems, maker of directory-enabled software products, and changed the company name to ActivIdentity. The change was to better reflect its combined hardware/software position. The company’s Senior Vice President of Business Development, Ed McBeth, and I had been trying to get together for a meeting for almost two months and finally found ourselves on the two ends of a phone conversation last week.

The company has just released Version 6 of its SecureLogin product for Enterprise Single Sign-On (ESSO), the first major release since SecureLogin (and Protocom) were acquired. As expected, this version has fully integrated smart card support. But even more important, it continues to be one of the foremost ESSO applications on the market, a record going back to when it was one of the first such apps.

Besides the fully integrated smart card support, McBeth wanted me to be sure to note that this newest release of SecureLogin has significant enhancements in the areas of security, application support, deployment flexibility and ease-of-use. For the record, these are the new features in Version 6.0 in each area:

* Usability.

* A new user interface.

* An enhanced Web wizard.

* More applications supported out of the box.

* Seamless login for stand-alone mode.

* Security.

* FIPS 140-2- (U.S. government-) compliant cryptographic libraries.

* Optional application credential storage on smart card.

* Optional user data store encryption using PKI based credentials.

* Optional use of AES cryptographic algorithm to encrypt user’s data store.

* Support for Entrust’s Entelligence Client.

* Optional Non-repudiation protection.

* One-time Password via smart card possible.

* Functionality.

* Support for Mozilla Firefox.

* User-enabled backup and restore.

* The ability to detect Windows applications that open before SecureLogin.

* Microsoft Active Directory Application Mode (ADAM) support.

* Administration.

* Web based management in a Novell environment via the I-Manager interface.

* New administrator tool in LDAP mode, including LDAP browser.

* User administration possible via Active Directory group policies.

* Novell Audit Support.

* Ability to allow users to view credentials without modifying them.

All-in-all, the enhancements include much more than just smart card integration. ActivIdentity shows that you can issue one card that handles physical access, tokenized login credentials, multifactor authentication and enterprise single sign-on. You really should check it out at ActivIdentity’s Web site.