Vasco offers two-factor authentication via mobile phone

Digipass uses an employee's mobile phone as the authentication device

Authentication firm Vasco has unveiled an addition to its Digipass platform aimed at helping companies provider safer access for remote workers.

Digipass for Mobile Enterprise Security Edition allows organisations to deploy two-factor authentication using an employee's mobile phone as the authentication device, rather than a dedicated token.

Vasco claimed that one of the biggest problems with implementing strong authentication in large corporate environments is simply the scale and complexity involved in deploying the system.

The company hopes that the use of mobile phones, combined with its new Application Provisioning Service, will help eradicate these hurdles.

"More and more companies are subject to data theft attacks and are increasingly looking for user-friendly and easy-to-deploy security solutions," said Jan Valcke, president and chief operating officer at Vasco.

"Next to that, almost everyone has a mobile phone in their pocket. With Digipass for Mobile Enterprise Security Edition, the mobile phone can easily and securely be leveraged for two-factor authentication in corporate environments."

IT departments will need to be running Vacman Controller, Vacman Middleware Identikey or aXsGuard, and then assign which applications Digipass for Mobile will be used for, such as virtual private network, application security or web mail access.

Users can then sign up to the service providing their phone number, at which point they will be able to download the mobile application and request activation information from the IT department.

As well as the added convenience of not having to use a separate token for authentication, the system automatically synchronises with the time server, creating a more secure time-based password.

More than 400 different types of mobile devices are currently supported, according to Vasco, working on Blackberry and all platforms that can run Java applications including Nokia, Samsung, Sony Ericsson and Siemens. Notably missing from the list is support for the iPhone and Android devices.