The globalization of business, the proliferation of, and dependency on technology, and the preservation of a trusted and secure environment to facilitate financial institutions, all require financial services organizations to have mechanisms in place to ensure sound and reliable security and privacy. Without these mechanisms, financial institutions cannot offer the trusted environment that is so crucial to their success.

This responsibility becomes more daunting in the information and web technology arena, which has fundamentally changed the way financial institutions conduct business, as well as the behavior and expectations of consumers. In a global and networked economy, with large numbers of mobile knowledge workers, including bankers, traders, brokers and consultants, who need access to key resources and applications, as well as all of the associated international, federal, and state regulations, the challenges for financial institutions are numerous.

Authernative can help

Authernative overcomes the security and identity management challenge necessary to facilitate financial institution’s e-commerce by providing authentication and authorization to internal and external mass users in a cost-effective, easily deployable, and easy to use manner. Below are examples of “pain points”, experienced by the financial services, insurance, & banking sectors, addressed by Authernative solutions.

Financial Services

As financial services companies move more customer-facing applications to the Web, clients' abilities to efficiently access online capabilities are often hampered by insufficient security guarantees. Financial services clients insist on a secure end-to-end process of opening accounts, inquiring about services online, and submitting applications. These demands require strong authentication applications to guarantee that customers' high-value transactions and critical data are secure when transferring files via the Internet, processing them on Web servers, or storing them on a variety of platforms.

The emergence of online applications as Web Services is yet another development causing financial institutions to recognize how critical it is to have strong end-user authentication and authorization that will insure confidence in the identity of those with whom they transact business. Identity theft has become a serious threat to brokerages, lenders and the payments system in online environments, where the customer is absent from the point of sale and where utilizing traditional assets to verify customer identity result in failure. While there is a push in the market for two factor authentication, companies are not able to provide it due to the fact that biometrics (thumbprints and retina scans), hardware tokens and smart cards are high-cost, high maintenance solutions, and the supporting infrastructure is still not very robust. As a result, financial institutions have come to rely on identity verification solutions that ask questions and score the answers using a rules-based risk model. However, these solutions are not truly accurate or secure, inconvenient to users, require multiple data sources to minimize false positives, PKI for encryption management, managed control lists to maintain verification and authentication, and third party verification services - all complicating the process, communications, and costs.

Authernative solutions overcome these challenges. Incorporating Authernative AuthGuard® and PassEnabler® authentication, authorization, administration, and auditing solutions into the security scheme of financial institutions allows them to protect financial brands, mitigate risk, and speed time to market while retaining control of access issuance, access levels, and other key security policies. Authernative solutions are well suited for financial institutions’ requirements, due to the lack of need to install software on clients' systems, attach smart card or biometric readers, or distribute hardware tokens.

Furthermore, Authernative's web-based security solutions carry a minimal "nuisance" factor for financial institutions and their clients due to the ease of technology use, minimal impact on customers' existing systems and routines, and absence of hassles or management challenges.

Insurance Companies

Insurance companies, with their extensive networks of brokers and brokers' clients, who need access to the company's systems, have the enormous challenge of managing access privileges and passwords. Some of their issues include:

• Dealing with distributed nature of the workforce with some employees traveling constantly and using dial-up connection while others are located permanently in home offices, including telecommuters with high-speed connections.

• Often, insurance companies do not know who is signing on. The problem is worsened by the fact that these companies have a lot of different environments hosting multiple disparate data sources; each one requires a password, and companies’ agents should have seamless access to them.

• The insurance industry is becoming more outwardly focused, and the electronic interchange of data between parties is increasing in volume.

• Apart from data protection, audit control, and privacy protection, mandated by Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act and Health Information Portability and Accountability Act, insurers must protect themselves and their customers from fraud and unsolicited access to sensitive data.

• Delegating access to information and applications is of very high importance, requiring role-based access technology allowing securing customer or patient records as they are accessed throughout the insurance organization by internal users and external business partners.

• The larger the constituency of users, the more stringent requirements to authentication, authorization, and encryption are arising.

To deal with these challenges, Authernative provides an integrated authentication, authorization, administration, auditing, and single sign-on solution. PassEnabler® allows for web based single sign-on access which secures access and reduces the number of log-ins required of users (employees, B2B partners, or consumers). PassEnabler® is a cost-effective security tool for supporting the field force and a major contributor in reducing administrative workload. As the marketplace becomes increasingly dispersed, PassEnabler® facilitates secure access to various applications and the network.

Banking

For example, a bank wants customers to use its online banking application. Such a product would require stronger authentication than passwords, because such account activity information is highly valuable. However, it is simply not feasible for the bank to provide its customers the hardware tokens, smartcards, or biometrics necessary for stronger authentication. Authernative offers a convenient solution by providing software-based strong authentication and authorization that is feasible, practical, and easy to use.