Executive summary:

For financial institutions conducting transactions over electronic channels, the most prevalent vulnerability is also the most obvious one: the use of static passwords as a form of user authentication. Outdated and weak, static passwords are ineffective against today’s security threats. To rely on static passwords as a means of authentication in the financial world is an open invitation for fraudulent attacks, compromised accounts and financial losses.

As the global leader in two-factor authentication solutions for the financial industry, VASCO offers mature technologies designed to complement existing security policies and minimally impact the existing IT architecture. VASCO solutions have been refined by years of experience in some of the world’s largest deployments, most commonly to secure high-risk areas such as:

• ACH and wire transfers
• Cash management
• FX
• Proprietary applications
• Mobile applications

Goal:

VASCO’s Strong Authentication solutions provide financial organizations with strong, viable security solutions that can be seamlessly and effortlessly implemented into existing security systems, so financial organizations can stay focused on what they do best: providing banking and financial services—securely.

VASCO solutions perform a range of functions:

• One-time passwords
• Challenge and response
• Electronic signatures and transaction validation
• Host authentication
  

Threats:

When sensitive information is not properly secured, fraudsters have a variety of techniques in their arsenal in order to steal it. Among the most prevalent are pharming, phishing, Trojan horses, viruses and man-in-the-middle attacks combined with malicious code. Almost all of the attacks are aimed at baiting victims into visiting spoofed websites or downloading malicious software. The attackers can then steal confidential credentials (such as username and password) and use this information to take over bank accounts and conduct fraudulent transactions.

Benefits:

Native Integration

• Core API-based authentication platform
• Continuous stability
• Customizable integration
• Inherent disaster recovery

Unlimited Scalability

• Easy to add more users and/or applications
• No need to rebuild the back-end infrastructure
• 9,000+ authentications per second

Single Backend Platform

• Significant cost savings and flexibility
• No need for additional servers
• HSM support

Multiple End-User Devices
All form factors are supported in every installation. 

• Software authentication
• Mobile authentication
• SMS delivery
• USB authenticators
• Smart cards

Best Total Cost of Ownership

• No need for separate authentication servers and replicas
• No need for separate authentication database

Additional Services

• Branding - Customizable hardware authenticators are an excellent way to extend brand presence with your online customers.
• Deployment - VASCO offers a range of flexible deployment services, including packaging design and production, inventory management and secure mailing to end-users.
  

Approach:

Based on the financial institution’s existing architecture, VASCO’s back-end platform is integrated into one or more customer-facing applications. VASCO has existing partnerships with a broad range of vendors in the portal, single sign-on and banking applications markets.

Components:

Client products:

• VASCO DIGIPASS

Server products

• VACMAN Controller
• IDENTIKEY