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How does Entrust IdentityGuard Provide Strong Authentication?

The industry defines strong authentication as "requiring more than usernames and passwords to identify unique users". Entrust IdentityGuard takes strong authentication one step further by delivering a wide-range of strong authentication options including two-factor and mutual authentication — enabling all parties in an online transaction to be confident in each other's identity.

Strong authentication is a tool that your organization likely uses in some form today. Whether it is for VPN remote access, Microsoft® Windows® security, or web-based applications, you are now looking for ways to provide strong authentication to a wider audience, with greater control and flexibility in determining how to secure different users and transactions — based on the risk associated with those transactions.

Entrust IdentityGuard is a strong authentication platform that enables you to layer security across your diverse users, transactions and applications — according to risk assessment. It is a common sense approach to strong authentication (read more in the white paper) that enables you to apply the right level of strong authentication tailored to the assessed risk for the transaction that the user is performing. The strong authentication platform integrates with your existing environment and minimizes the impact of security on your users including employees, customers and partners.

Strong Authentication that Costs Less
Traditional methods of strong authentication include time-synchronous hardware tokens that randomly generate one-time passwords, such as RSA SecurID tokens. Entrust IdentityGuard makes it possible to save more than 80% off the purchase cost of RSA SecurID tokens. In addition, Entrust IdentityGuard offers more two-factor authentication and mutual authentication options to strengthen user authentication in ways that improve acceptance for your users.

None of Entrust IdentityGuard's authentication methods require distribution of hardware or software. By leveraging existing devices and knowledge already possessed by the user, and by leveraging very cost effective physical form factors, organizations can anticipate substantially lower authentication costs versus conventional time-synchronous tokens while still achieving the goal of strong, mutual authentication.

Layering Strong Authentication Matches Security to Risk
As part of a layered defense against online attacks, organizations need to connect fraud detection capabilities to the risk assessment process to ensure the right level of security is applied to a given transaction. Entrust IdentityGuard provides organizations with the ability to react in real-time, based on their risk-assessment analysis, to apply strong authentication to protect against identity attacks that lead to identity theft, transaction fraud and unauthorized access.

There are many reasons why it makes sense to layer strong authentication across your online environment:

Stronger security for transactions with greater risk
Minimize the impact of security on the user experience by requiring stronger authentication only when required to reduce the risk of fraud Reduce the cost of deploying varying degrees of security to all users, managed under one risk-based strong authentication platform Apply strong authentication across the many different channels over which you communicate with your employees, partners and customers such as over the Internet, the telephone and in-person.

Entrust IdentityGuard has been designed to provide organizations with several mutual authentication options. These mutual authentication techniques can be used in email or print communications as well as on web applications. Entrust IdentityGuard combines mutual authentication with flexible options for strong authentication in ways that best fit into the user experience, minimizing the impact of increasing security while increasing the confidence of your users in your online services.

Security Grid Serial Number Replay: users are presented with the serial number from their unique security grid cards
Grid Location Replay: users are presented with values from specific coordinates on their unique security grid cards
Message Replay: a unique, personalized shared secret is presented to the user
Image Replay: an image that was selected by the user is presented as a method of authenticating the validity of the communication

Another mutual authentication method that can be leveraged with the grid card is for the replay of the data within specific grid coordinates. When displayed to the user, this coordinate information confirms that the site has specific knowledge of the contents of the user's grid and, therefore, must be legitimate.

Good for Customers, Employees and Regulators
These mutual authentication methods significantly increase the user's defense against online identity attacks and make it difficult to perpetrate fraud against the organization. All these methods are recognized by government agencies such as the FDIC and do not require the deployment of any hardware and software.

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