Authentication (User) Blog

User Authentication solutions provide two-factor authentication, public key infrastructure (PKI) services, and risk-based authentication to protect interactions between consumers, business partners, and employees. User Authentication solutions are delivered as cloud-based solutions, enabling enterprises to add strong authentication to applications, networks, and devices without the capital cost of hardware and software associated with traditional strong authentication solutions.

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  Updated: vipmobile 08 Aug 2012

  VeriSign has "got your back" on fraudulent ATM activity

  Han Dong, Senior Product Marketing Manager, User Authentication One great thing about blogging for a company like VeriSign, which happens to have so many cool tools in its bag, is that it's so easy to find several blogs on the net that mention you. And in this case I'm referring to a Wall Street Journal blog: "Under Surveillance: Big Brother Stocks", by James Altucher. In this blog, Altucher talks about all of the various measures (and money spent - to the tune of $200 billion in the U.S.) taken to automate the monitoring and protection of your banking transactions, checking in at the airport, and even your simple ATM cash...
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  Updated: vipmobile 08 Aug 2012

  Cloud computing security standards - Vinton Cerf, father of the internet, has got your back

  Han Dong, Senior Product Marketing Manager, User Authentication It's a good thing that people much smarter than me are thinking about the future of the internet, cloud computing, and ensuring I'm properly indoctrinated on the right social networking sites du jour. More importantly, these same smart people are constantly thinking about really critical things, like 'standards', 'interoperability', and 'security'. Guys like Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the Web and HTML, Paul Mockapetris, the inventor of DNS, and Vinton Cerf, the father of the internet and co-designer of TCP/IP, are constantly analyzing what's happening today and thinking about what's coming in the future. These people are part of the founding fathers of the web, the internet, and how all the intricate pieces work together seamlessly -...
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  Updated: vipmobile 08 Aug 2012

  Layered Security Strategy, the Key to Trust

  Han Dong, Senior Product Marketing Manager, User Authentication Some thoughts on a couple of recent articles, one from Gartner Research: Where Strong Authentication Fails and What You Can Do About It, by Avivah Litan and a similar article by Jaikumar Vijayan in Computerworld, which also references Ms. Litan's article. The basic idea presented in these two articles is that "one-time passwords...are no longer enough to protect online banking transactions against fraud." These one-time password (OTP) token-based two-factor authentication methods may be compromised by man-in-the-browser malware that overwrites the user transactions to steal their assets. So the general recommendation from Avivah Litan is "A...
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  Updated: Vicente 08 Aug 2012

  Phishing is not just for email anymore: Twitter under attack

  I always find it interesting the way old scams are redressed for new and emerging channels. That was the case during the last few days when Twitter users and employees found themselves under attack by phishers and hackers: follow these links to find a good account of the former and the latter. Today I'll talk about the phishing attack, which consisted in luring people to give away their twitter passwords to a fake site, the novel aspect is that it used twitter-generated messages (Direct Messages) to propagate to your list of contacts (Followers). This is all pretty similar to what we have seen with phishing via e-mail, but with two key differences: - The first one is that e-mail phishing is a "mature product" where phishers are one cog in the big underground economy of stolen...
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  Updated: vipmobile 08 Aug 2012

  The Palin Email Hack

  The recent news about how Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin's Yahoo email account was hacked makes it clear as day that we need better security for web based email, and we need to close the giant loophole of "password reset". Web email often gets lumped into the bucket of "low value" accounts, so system designers pay little attention to the security of its authentication systems, but it often contains our most personal details. How many more high-profile account takeovers are we going to see before people take account security seriously? Come on folks, usernames and passwords just don't cut it anymore, and the problem isn't just limited to financial sites. This incident also makes it abundantly clear that system designers need to take a holistic, layered approach to security. Palin's Yahoo account was...
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  Updated: Tim Callan 08 Aug 2012

  Welcome to the VeriSign Identity Protection Network, ABA!

  Today we announced that the American Bankers Association will be joining the VIP Network. We are very excited about this on many levels. Getting VIP credentials into the hands of 350 member banks creates a huge opportunity for VeriSign and makes this much more convenient for their users. ABA Members will have first hand experience with strong authentication on tools they use every day. And as this protection rolls out, ABA member banks will witness how easily they can deploy strong, two-factor authentication, and how convenient it is for their customers. We look forward to working with the ABA. Welcome to the network!
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  Updated: Tim Callan 08 Aug 2012

  Layered Security Approach in the Real World

  My name is Fran Rosch and I manage the group that writes this blog and develops VeriSign's identity and authentication solutions. I just got back from a 2-week trip to India, Israel and London talking to customers, prospects, and VeriSign team members. I spent much of the time talking about how customers should deploy solutions that are very "risk based." When consumers access lots of critical data or financial assets on their website, a user name and password is probably not enough. But how much is enough? Does one solution fit all? How much should we change user experience? How much should we spend on security and authentication? As I traveled through the airports in San Francisco, Frankfurt, Bangalore, Delhi, Mumbai, Amman, Tel Aviv and Heathrow, I was struck by the very different security policies and I realized that they also deploy "risk-based" approaches just as we recommend on our customer's Web sites. Here were some different approaches I noticed:...