Johannesburg, 02 Jul 2009
Fresh from the US launch of its universal personal authenticator, Cape-based FireID, a company that provides personal authentication via mobile phones [F1], has deployed its application to the BlackBerry and iPhone smartphones.
FireID is a universal personal authenticator that turns a mobile phone into a self-contained, one-time-password (OTP) generator to enable highly secure VPN access and online transactions.
The company develops applications for every make and model of mobile phone, taking into account their varying capabilities and specifications.
During the provisioning process, the appropriate version of the FireID token application is delivered, ensuring it is suitable for the specific mobile device, its capabilities and specifications.
"Both iPhone and BlackBerry are complex platforms to provision to, so this is a significant achievement for us," says Jenny Dugmore, CEO of FireID. "It's particularly important given the increasing popularity of both phones; in the US, for example, company employees regularly receive iPhones and BlackBerrys as a matter of course as these give them complete mobility. With the development of the two FireID applications for these phones, we have gained access to an enormous potential customer base."
Dugmore says FireID has a specific build of its tokens for most phones. This makes it easy for companies to brand the application [F6] on the phone.
"A generic token application would mean it would be difficult to have one look and feel and branding therefore becomes very difficult," she adds. "With the custom FireID tokens, large companies which deploy multiple tokens can ensure that the application is completely in line with their corporate branding rules. This is one of FireID's key differentiators."
The token application is installed once on all end-users' mobile phones. It is highly secure and generates random OTPs to allow users to authenticate to a FireID protected resource. It does not rely on any cellular network connectivity to operate – passwords are generated entirely independently of any network.
In addition to iPhone and BlackBerry, FireID supports almost all mobile devices using Java, and natively supports Microsoft Windows Mobile devices. Integration with the Today screen on Windows Mobile provides easy access to the FireID token.
The token application can store many different tokens for authenticating to different resources. Each token is independently encrypted and segregated. The user simply chooses the token they want to use (such as "My bank", "The office", or "Remote VPN (network) access") from within the FireID application, and an appropriate OTP is generated.
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