Ads by TechWords

See your link here
Subscribe to our e-mail newsletters
For more info on a specific newsletter, click the title. Details will be displayed in a new window.
Security
Computerworld Daily News (First Look and Wrap-Up)
Computerworld Blogs Newsletter
The Weekly Top 10
More E-Mail Newsletters 
 

U.S. Bancorp, VeriSign team on banking security

The service relies on hardware-token-based authentication

October 26, 2004 12:00 PM ET

IDG News Service - U.S. Bancorp will use a hardware-token-based authentication service from VeriSign Inc. to secure access to commercial banking services for its customers, and may soon introduce a similar service for consumer banking customers, according to a VeriSign executive.
The bank will use VeriSign's Unified Authentication service to validate and secure interactions with commercial banking customers, providing them with a secure Universal Serial Bus token that they must use when accessing services online. The deal is just the latest evidence of renewed interest in so-called "multifactor" authentication within the banking industry, which is struggling with an epidemic of online identity theft scams, according to Judy Lin, executive vice president for VeriSign's security services.
As part of the program, U.S. Bancorp will make VeriSign security tokens available to more than 10,000 commercial banking customers. Those tokens will hold a digital certificate that identifies the bearer and will need to be inserted into machines before accessing Web-based commercial banking applications, Lin said.
The Unified Authentication service combines VeriSign-branded eToken USB authentication devices from Aladdin Knowledge Systems Inc. in Chicago with a managed validation service that runs on VeriSign's infrastructure. It also includes software modules that plug into a bank's existing back-end infrastructure. Banks can also choose to operate their own validation server as part of the service, Lin said.
At U.S. Bancorp, the authentication service will be integrated with existing user directory and identity management technology, validating interactions between the bank and its customers. A server operated by VeriSign will handle token validation, but no customer information will leave U.S. Bancorp's network in the process, she said.
VeriSign launched the Unified Authentication service in September as an extension of its Intelligence and ControlSM Services, which offer businesses network security information and tools. User log-in and permission information resides in the customer's user directory but is linked to a unique serial number for a secure token or other authentication device stored on a VeriSign server. Log-in requests by users will be passed to the VeriSign server, where a stored algorithm will validate that the serial number of the secure token or the one-time password is valid for the user requesting access, VeriSign said.
The eighth-largest bank in the country, U.S. Bancorp has over $190 billion in assets and 2,344 offices in 24 states. The bank chose VeriSign's new service for its ability to support many users and different types of authentication tokens, Richard Stephenson, U.S. Bancorp director of information security, said in a statement.
"U.S. Bancorp sees a large audience of different types of users, from


Reprinted with permission from

IDG.net
Story copyright 2009 International Data Group. All rights reserved.

Additional Resources

POLL RESULTS
Accelerate your knowledge of the IT world you inhabit by viewing the results of a series of polls taken by your IT peers. These polls of 100+ IT professionals each are available for full viewing. They cover key topics such as virtualization, processor performance, green IT, cloud computing and many others. Be a part of the buzz.
WHITE PAPER
Technology is complex. Keeping it running productively shouldn't be. To that end, you want to minimize the number of solutions needed in-house to simplify operations, maintenance, and support. Kodak offers a best-practices model. One company provides support for both scanner and software, for fast problem resolution without vendor finger-pointing. Download now!
WHITE PAPER
Utilizing demand intelligence improves the precision of pricing, product assortments, channel/store placement, and promotion, which are all essential for sustainable revenue management performance. Learn more, download this free whitepaper today.

White Papers & Webcasts

Centralized Data Backup and Your WAN
Is your organization prepared to tackle the massive challenge of protecting your data in a cost effective and timely manner? With a growing...  

Why Compliance Pays
This OnDemand webcast explores the relationship that firms with best compliance records have higher revenue, greater customer retention, lower financial losses from data...

An All-in-One Approach to Web Security
Granting web access to employees poses challenges to IT administrators and introduces unique security risks. Even as companies have perfected their security techniques...  

Best Practices for Managing Business Risks from the Use of IT
(Source: Symantec) Based on exhaustive benchmarks conducted by the IT Policy Compliance, this session highlights the relationship between business risks and use of...

The Hidden Dangers of Spam
Beyond the well-understood productivity drain that spam inflicts on businesses, threats posed by illicit email circulating through a network are causing many security...  

Managing And Protecting Your Ever Increasing Mobile Assets
(Source: Absolute Software) Your users are becoming more mobile each day. This is great for productivity - yet challenging for IT control. Natalie...

Open Source Security Myths Dispelled
(Source: Astaro) Open Source Software is computer software whose source code is available to the general public. This openly viewable nature...  

Sun OpenSSO Enterprise Webinar
(Source: Sun) This webinar replay discusses Sun OpenSSO Enterprise innovation--the single, open-source solution that helps your business solve the challenges around internal access...

Best Practices for Backing Up VMware® with Veritas NetBackup™
VMware® is used by enterprises large and small to increase the efficiency and cost-effectiveness of their IT operations. With this in mind, Symantec...  

Agile Enterprise Content Management (ECM) for Rapid ROI
(Source: IBM) Content rich business processes are a core feature of daily operations at just about any organization today. Very often these essential...