Edinburgh – January 6th 2005 – Prime Business Solutions and Identrica today announced a sales and support partnership to further the use of mobile handsets as socially acceptable two factor personal identification tokens for secure electronic systems access such as WEB Banking, E-Retailing and remote access applications.
Additionally, Prime Business Solutions has launched a sales and marketing campaign around the concept of ‘Social Tokens’. Its efforts will be focused on communicating with the banking and E-retailing business community to promote the concept of using the now ubiquitous mobile phone handset as a device to provide a second level of authentication to electronic systems, with no additional cost to the phone user, and with little or no technology footprint for the bank or retailer.
Chris Gabriel, Security Business Director at Prime comments, “Two factor authentication using specific hardware token devices just does not scale into the mass market banking and retailing sector, and yet the consumer and the service provider are desperate to increase the security of online transactions and therefore further clarify user identity. The mobile phone has become a part of all our lives in recent years, and it uniquely identifies us as individuals with our 11 digit personal phone number. In harnessing the existing security offered by bankers and retailers with a simple no-cost call to a personal security phone number, it is now possible to deploy widespread two factor authentication without the cost, complexity, or confusion that arises with specialist hardware tokens. Prime is pleased to be working with Identrica to take this concept to the UK market and work to improve the security and identification of critical commercial applications.”
“Consumers’ confidence in making transactions online has been dented recently by ‘phishing’ and similar scams,” noted John Brand, Managing Director of Identrica. “Now we can provide a commercially viable way for banks and e-retailers to offer robust, two-factor authentication to their customers without the expense and administrative overheads of hardware tokens or digital certificates.”
Brand continues, “Identrica is delighted to be working with Prime Business Solutions, who have exactly the knowledge and experience of the Finance and Banking sector to match our technology to the market’s needs.”
About Prime Business Solutions Prime is a focused ICT infrastructure solutions provider. Part of the 2e2 Group, a balanced portfolio of IT Service companies, based in the UK and Netherlands, we provide innovative solutions for the secure transportation and delivery of information and communications in offices, across campuses, locally, regionally and internationally. These solutions increase
stakeholder value, improve customer service and enhance competitive advantage by improving business efficiency and agility whilst reducing cost. We wrap our solutions with in-house delivered life cycle services from consultancy and design through to installation, support and managed services.
As UK market leaders in IP Telephony, IP Contact Centre and IP Video, Prime has a track record of de-risking the implementation of leading edge technologies and is recognised at the highest level by leading global IT vendors. Prime has been formally recognised as one of the fastest growing companies in the UK. Coupled with this, the business runs an extremely healthy balance sheet and we retain a significant profit, unlike many of our major
competitors.
Prime maintains regional offices in London, Birmingham and Edinburgh. Coupled with our Newbury HQ, we deliver solutions throughout the UK and worldwide through our global partner network.
About Identrica
The Identrica Authentication System turns a standard mobile phone into a “token” to replace smartcards, USB tokens or “authenticators”. This provides strong, two-factor authentication – so that a user has to show that he or she not only knows a password, but also physically possesses something unique to them. Identrica authentication can be provided either as a fully managed service or as a “stand-alone” application. Identrica Limited has been providing IT security software and consultancy since 1996. Since 2000 the company has concentrated on user authentication, developing the X Identity USB token in 2001 and the technology behind the mobile phone based Identrica system in 2003. The company’s headquarters are in Edinburgh and its development office is in Olney, Buckinghamshire.
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