infoTECH Feature

October 12, 2011

PhoneFactor Multi-Factor Authentication Solutions Now Available to Government Agencies

PhoneFactor (News - Alert), a provider of out-of-band multi-factor authentication, announced a new partnership with Accelera Solutions to make PhoneFactor available to government agencies through the GSA (News - Alert) Advantage! program.

In a release, Timothy Sutton, CEO of PhoneFactor said, “PhoneFactor has been deployed by a number of federal, state, and local government agencies, including the US Department of State, the District of Columbia government, and the Federal Railroad Administration, to protect the sensitive data they are entrusted to store. We look forward to extending our reach to other government agencies through our partnership with Accelera and inclusion in the GSA Advantage schedule.”

PhoneFactor’s platform uses any phone as a second form of authentication. PhoneFactor’s out-of-band architecture and real-time fraud alerts ensures the provision of strong security for government, healthcare, enterprise, banking, and Web site applications.

Company sources revealed that the inclusion in the GSA schedule will streamline the procurement process for government agencies, which are increasingly deploying PhoneFactor to deal with cyber threats proactively.

Recent attacks such as the breach at RSA and other attacks against defense contractors Lockheed Martin (News - Alert) and Northrup Grumman have exposed the need for optimum authentication practices. The need for multi-factor authentication and evolving to out-of-band authentication methods like PhoneFactor ensures greater protection against threats to optimize wide-scale deployments.

Joe Brown, president of Accelera Solution stated, “Government agencies, which are responsible for protecting top-secret intelligence data as well as an immense amount of personal information about its citizens, are upgrading and extending security controls to protect against increasingly sophisticated and virulent attacks.”

PhoneFactor will help agencies benefit from strong security for preventing unauthorized access with an affordable system that is manageable on a large scale. This extends into Virtual Cloud environments, both public and private, Brown pointed out.

In other news, Imprivata, Inc. and PhoneFactor have announced a reseller partnership to provide phone-based authentication services to Imprivata customers.



Shamila Janakiraman is a contributing editor for TMCnet. To read more of Shamila’s articles, please visit her columnist page.

Edited by Jennifer Russell
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