Secret Double Octopus Elevates Mobile Push to Highest Assurance Authentication

New Cryptographic bound Proximity Validation Feature Creates “High Assurance” Mobile Push Authentication for Privileged Business and Technical Users

MENLO PARK, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Secret Double Octopus (SDO), the leader in workforce Passwordless and desktop MFA, has enhanced its Passwordless MFA platform to offer government- caliber identity verification to enterprises who need high-assurance login for privileged business and technical users. SDO’s new Proximity Assurance feature uses familiar mobile push notifications to cryptographically “pin” users to workstations without requiring additional hardware, smart cards, or re-architecting of apps and directors.

Push Made Secure

In the past, moving to high assurance authentication has meant changing the enterprise’s applications and identity infrastructure to support X.509 certificates commonly found in government PIV and CAC hardware authenticators. Most enterprises hesitate to adopt these approaches due to inflexibility, complexity, and expense. Modern systems like FIDO2 provide an option but mainly work with web apps.

“Combining the convenience of push with the added assurance of requiring users to be in close proximity to their desktop bulletproofs the login process without IT teams having to buy and manage extra devices or authentication apps,” says Shimrit Tzur-David, co-founder and CSO of Secret Double Octopus. “This effectively brings government-caliber AAL 3 authentication to the enterprise without considerable added overhead.”

Using Proximity to Extend Industry-Leading Features

SDO’s Octopus Authentication Platform is recognized as having the industry’s broadest use case coverage for workforce Passwordless authentication. The platform was recently recognized as a SINET16 Innovator for Passwordless MFA and provides security for logins from Windows, Mac and Linux endpoints, as well as a host of on-premises corporate services and legacy apps that are otherwise challenging to modernize to Passwordless MFA. The solution uses a wide range of alternatives to passwords including biometrics and advanced cryptography options that do not require expensive and inflexible smart cards or hardware FIDO2 tokens.

With the newly added proximity assurance, the Octopus Platform now enables the secure use of mobile push notifications, a technique that is simple and familiar to users. Proximity Assurance only unlocks the desktops when a request comes from a known user (verified via biometrics directly on the user’s phone) within proximity of the approved workstation. This added layer of verification ensures that the request is coming from an IT-approved user in physical possession of the authenticator and an approved workstation.

This capability enables businesses requiring high-assurance MFA, such as financial services, industrial critical infrastructure and healthcare, the option to use flexible notifications sent to their smartphones.

“These days virtually every industry sector integrates with federal network environments or requires that same level of confidence in their authentication process for other reasons,” Tzur-David adds. “Our new proximity assurance mobile push capabilities let enterprises secure their systems with the same high-assurance MFA outlined by NIST, CISA, and other government mandates and guidelines.”

About SDO

Secret Double Octopus is a leader in next-generation workforce authentication solutions. The Octopus platform offers organizations the ability to move to a higher security and more frictionless authentication platform for traditional and Passwordless MFA. The Octopus platform is differentiated in 3 key areas: 1) completeness, 2) ease of deployment without requiring change to infrastructure and 3) flexibility for the Passwordless journey. Organizations from Fortune 100 to small-sized companies use the Octopus platform to authenticate their employees every day for better security, better productivity and lower cost. The company has been designated a Gartner "Cool Vendor", named “Best-in-Class" Passwordless provider by AITE Group and a 2023 SINET16 Innovator. Learn more at www.doubleoctopus.com.