Enterprise & Financial Institutions See Immediate Benefits from Increased Risk Mitigation and Flexibility across All Major Mobile Operating Systems

ActivIdentity®, part of HID Global®, trusted leader in solutions for the delivery of secure identity, today announced that the latest version of its 4TRESS products offer the most granular level of control on the market for organisations aiming to enforce not only which operating systems (OS) and which soft tokens are used, but also which soft token version. With this soft token solution, users can easily choose which mobile and computer operating systems are allowed to run a soft token, and which versions of the soft token are allowed as well. As more enterprise and commerce workers use their personal smartphones and tablets in the workplace, known as Bring-Your-Own-Device (BYOD), the ability to control those devices and secure organisational data becomes an unaddressed pain point, particularly amongst security-conscious organisations. This solution elegantly and affordably addresses that problem.

ActivIdentity 4TRESS provides complete multi-layered versatile strong authentication for enterprises looking to secure access conveniently and cost-effectively. This update enables soft token One-Time-Password (OTP) solutions to be easily controlled based on the type of OS and the version of the soft token to find the appropriate balance between security, convenience and cost.

“Our customers in the enterprise and banking sectors are searching for solutions which increase productivity and access while simultaneously decreasing risk and improving control - a difficult proposition,” said Jeff Schmidt, Global Head, Business Continuity, Security & Governance, BT. “The added features in this latest version of 4TRESS should provide more flexibility, improved control and better risk mitigation across the top 3 mobile operating systems.”

Currently, a startling 71 percent of organisations allow workers to bring their own devices. For those organisations which are forward-thinking enough to have developed a policy, they still face workarounds from tech-savvy users. By adding in these control mechanisms, they can specify that users can only access data if they are using a particular operating system, for example. This means the system administrator can have a very specific user profile for who is accessing sensitive data, how they are doing it and what type of device they are accessing it from.

New 4TRESS Authentication Server Features Include:

    Control over which soft token platform is used in a particular environment. For example, a user can decide to enable iOS, Windows and Blackberry but disable usage from Android and J2ME phones.

    Version control for any and all soft tokens. For example, a user could enable the usage of the soft token v.4.1.1 running on iOS but disable access from the soft token v4.0.1 running on iOS, or any other iteration. This provides customers with additional options for risk mitigation.

    Software version reports which give users the ability see how many end-users they have from any type of operating system, or even the version of the soft token used. For example, a system administrator could run a report which would determine that 20 percent of users are running Android, and 30 percent of those are using soft token version 4.0.1 with the other 70 percent using version 4.1.1.

“As the BYOD phenomenon has truly taken hold, we see a clear and present need to enable flexibility for our customers who wanted the maximum amount of control to data access,” said Julian Lovelock, Vice President Product Marketing, ActivIdentity. “This product addresses that need in a number of granular ways not otherwise seen in the market today.”

Availability
The latest version of the 4TRESS solution is available immediately for the Authentication Server and AAA Server for Remote Access solutions. It will be available in the first quarter of 2013 for the Authentication Appliance. For more information, click here.