Small and mid-size organizations have recognized the need for strong authentication, but adoption has been slow due to most offerings falling short of meeting the specific needs and budgets of these organizations. RSA, The Security Division of EMC, today announced RSA Authentication Manager Express, a new strong authentication solution designed to meet the cost and convenience requirements of SMBs.
RSA Authentication Manager Express is a risk-based and on-demand authentication system designed for organizations to provide up to 2,500 end users with secure access to data and business applications through SSL Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) and online portals. The system employs an intelligent risk engine engineered to provide invisible, behind-the-scenes protection of web-based resources against unauthorized access. Users continue to employ their standard username and password. Security is stepped up when the risk engine detects abnormal behavior, requiring users to correctly answer personal challenge questions and/or enter SMS- or email-delivered one-time pass codes before access is granted.
Today’s organizations are faced with the challenges of an increasingly mobile workforce, stricter regulations, and advanced threats that target sensitive information and intellectual property. Both industry researchers and real-world security breach events have demonstrated for years that weak, password-only protection is no match for savvy cybercriminals and cannot be considered an effective method of preventing unauthorized users from accessing company resources.
“Previous enterprise-class solutions have traditionally been too costly to deploy and manage for smaller organizations; cheaper alternatives lacked end-user convenience and didn’t provide multi-layered protection. RSA Authentication Manager Express combines the best of RSA’s expertise and innovation in enterprise and consumer authentication technology to provide the right balance of security, simplicity and features required by smaller organizations,” said Sally Hudson, Research Analyst at IDC.
Easy Transition from Password-only to Strong Authentication
RSA Authentication Manager Express helps organizations ensure the highest confidence that only approved users are accessing data and applications without inconveniencing them. The solution offers an easy way for organizations – including those that have never deployed multi-factor authentication in their environments – to implement a stronger and more secure alternative to password-only protection within a solution that is easily installed and requires near-zero ongoing management.
Additional Benefits:
• Proven technology that can be tailored to an organization’s resource constraints, risk tolerance, and the profile of its users
• Layered approach for added strength of security; is invisible to end-users unless authentication is outside of established policy
• Nothing for end-users to manage making it ideal for employee, partner and client/customer use cases. Seamless integration with leading SSL VPNs and Web Servers requiring minimal IT resources
• Audit capabilities help organizations track what users are accessing to meet changing compliance regulations; canned reports help simplify proving compliance
“Most authentication solutions are geared towards the enterprise, but this platform is appliance-based and much more accessible for mid-market organizations,” Morten Ekeroth Stenfeldt, Product Manager & Team Leader, IT Security at Denmark-based Distributor SEC DataCom A/S. “Being quick and simple to deploy as well, it’s a compelling offering for mid-sized businesses and we look forward to helping our resellers engage with them by providing new security solutions based on RSA Authentication Manager Express.”
RSA Authentication Manager Express will be generally available in March 2011.