SafeNet, Inc. today announced the immediate availability of SafeNet Authentication Service, a new cloud-based authentication service. The cloud authentication solution was designed and engineered specifically for the service provider environment and allows service providers to rapidly introduce authentication-as-a-service to their enterprise customers. By doing so, it enables service providers to increase their average revenue per user (ARPU), significantly reduce the cost and complexity associated with offering and implementing strong authentication, and strengthen their security and compliance posture.
SafeNet Authentication Service extends the company’s portfolio of two-factor authentication solutions, providing enterprise and government organizations with choice and flexibility to best customize their authentication solutions to meet current and future security needs.
SafeNet Authentication Service’s automated, customizable cloud platform can reduce authentication-related operational costs through the elimination of manual tasks associated with the provisioning, administration, billing, and management of users and tokens. Service providers can manage their customers from a multi-tier, multi-tenant platform that is vendor-agnostic and will work with an organization’s existing token technology, enabling a quick migration to a centralized cloud environment with minimal disruption to end users. In addition, the service can be white-label branded and completely customizable to the service provider’s needs, enhancing the service brand and overall awareness. In addition, the platform is highly scalable, which enables service providers to accommodate a growing number of customers added to the service without requiring costly infrastructure upgrades.
Strong authentication has also become a major challenge for today’s “extended enterprise,” in which remote employees, partners, customers, and other third parties require access to an organization’s systems, applications, and data. With no infrastructure required, enterprises can quickly turn to service providers for SafeNet Authentication Service to simplify the implementation of strong authentication in this environment—providing “security without borders” from a fully automated, high-assurance, trusted cloud environment.
In addition, SafeNet Authentication Service enables service providers to free up their customer’s IT staff to focus on higher-value activities. By doing so, this automation facilitates real-time policy application to ensure regulatory compliance and improved business efficiency.
According to Chris Morales of the 451 Research Group, “The consumerization of IT, the adoption of mobile computing and SaaS applications, and the incipient growth of desktop virtualization places identity front and center of emerging security and management concerns. As identity assumes more centrality for IT (in terms of both industry and organizational function) in coming to terms with these trends, securing the integrity of the identity assertion, characterizing it in terms of risk assessment, and supplementing (or supplanting) user name and password comprise the initial set of security hurdles. Also, as enterprises and organizations assess the requirements for authentication against the cost and flexibility of the options available from incumbent vendors, authentication-as-a-service, and new form factors or channels such as smartphone tokens and one-time passwords delivered as an SMS have gained in appeal.”
SafeNet Authentication Service reflects the combined offering resulting from SafeNet’s acquisition of Cryptocard in March 2012. This new service combines SafeNet’s market-leading authentication solutions with Cryptocard’s innovative, scalable, and flexible platform.