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Verizon has released a cloud-based credentialing service to clients in the U.S., European and Asia-Pacific regions that want to consolidate their physical and virtual worlds to help prevent data breaches.
“Smart Credential” offers a single identity that will work to secure access to buildings and facilities, provide logical access to workstations and networks, provide authentication to online systems and digital signature and encryption solutions, Verizon said Monday.
The service will be available to companies for usage through a pay-as-you-go subscription model but can also be available through basic authentication tokens, as well as credentials that are interoperable with U.S. federal government standards, such as PIV-I.
“Businesses today often need to rethink their security strategy when their operations expand resulting in new locations, more users, and additional systems and networks,” said Johan Sys, managing principal for identity and access management at Verizon Enterprise Solutions.
“While this is a positive sign for business, it also means increased security challenges as more users demand fast access to corporate information.”
Verizon aims for its service to work with existing physical access readers, back-end systems and secure contactless readers while helping clients to add more security over time,
By using a Web-based portal, Verizon expects that updates and changes will be able to be made quickly so that organizations have a view into who and how data is being accessed in both the physical and virtual realms.
Verizon said they expect this to be helpful in managing lost credentials, new hires, departed employees and a change-over with partners and/or suppliers as well as suspicious network behavior.
According to the Verizon 2014 Data Breach Investigations Report, two-thirds of all breaches can be attributed to lost/stolen user credentials.
