The RSA Conference 2011 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco has officially kicked off and the VIP team is starting the week off strong. Our VeriSign Identity Protection (VIP) Authentication Service is part of several exciting announcements this week and below is a brief look at what's in the news.

Ping Identity Integrates VIP to Deliver Cloud-Based Authentication with Single Sign-On
Ping Identity announced that it has integrated VIP into its PingFederate identity federate suite. The PingFederate Integration kit for VIP creates a solution that enables enterprises to secure remote workers with strong authentication, while providing them a single online identity with single sign-on across both internal applications and almost every leading cloud application. The complete press release can be...

According to a recent story in SearchSecurity.com UK, the EU Emissions Trading System was recently suspended by the European Union following what was described as "recurring security breaches in national registries over the last two months." The thefts involved $38 million worth of carbon credits.

Bloomberg reported that the latest breach occurred at Prague-based Electricity Market Operator (OTE), a government owned energy trading platform where over $7 million worth of carbon credits had been stolen and sold in the open market.

The Bloomberg story also reported that the OTE was...

The increasing adoption and use of all things SaaS and mobile device related has created a bevy of new security challenges for today's enterprise IT departments. According to a recent report by Forrester Consulting, commissioned by Symantec, enterprises are unnecessarily leaving their organizations vulnerable to unauthorized access by cybercriminals. The press release announcing the report can be found here.

The Forrester commissioned report is part of a new Symantec initiative called Strong Authentication for Enterprises (SAFE), developed to provide enterprises with third party research that looks at the activities "open" enterprises do every day by allowing access to company resources.

The Forrester report titled...

There's been recent news discussing the vulnerabilities of wireless apps for the banking industry and how they could impact users. As the number of Americans regularly using mobile banking services continues to grow, security concerns will grow along with them.

The challenges for banks to consider are all of the potential vulnerabilities in their implementation to better mitigate risks effectively while managing the delicate balance between extra layers of security vs. user experience.

Here are a few recommendations we suggest bank and financial institutions may want to consider:

- Deploy strong or two-factor authentication that goes beyond the traditional username and password. If username and password are compromised, the fraudster still needs the second factor to gain access to an account. With our VIP mobile SDK, banks can enable a silent user experience for a second factor of authentication allowing greater security without negative...