Versatility is a theme that has emerged with the YubiKey, whether it’s support for Personal Identity Verification (PIV)-based capabilities, one-time passwords (OTP), or mobile authentication.
These authentication options are attractive to users and businesses because they’re contained in a single YubiKey that solves multiple use cases, simplifies user training, and improves security.
Our partner Centrify offers the same sort of flexibility and is the first identity and access management (IAM) platform to support smart card PIV, OTPs, and mobile authentication using a YubiKey.
Centrify’s Identity Service offers administrators and users single sign-on (SSO), adaptive authentication, and strong multi-factor authentication options – the newest being support for YubiKey. Centrify adds management features on their end, including enrollment, per-app policies and enforcement, and context-based multi-factor authentication across users, apps and servers. The Identity Service bridges old, new, and cloud systems, along with multiple operating systems.
YubiKey’s support of PIV, a smart card that satisfies identification standards required for federal employees, means the card’s credentials can be loaded on the key, which streamlines them into a new smart card form factor and eliminates the need for cumbersome card readers.
YubiKey PIV-capabilities used for Active Directory-based logins to Mac OS X and Linux platforms also adhere to National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) requirements. And the smart card features support login to Centrify’s cloud service for SSO, secure remote access, or administration features.
With YubiKey’s support for Near Field Communication (NFC), a simple tap of the key against an NFC-enabled mobile device authenticates a user to apps and servers. OATH-HOTP support in the Centrify Identity Service lets organizations use a YubiKey configured with an OTP when a smart card-enabled environment is not available.
“Because it is so hard to secure the things that are outside your control like apps, users, and devices, let’s call for multi-factor authentication wherever you need it,” said Ben Rice, Centrify’s Vice President of Worldwide Business Development.
Next month, Yubico and Centrify will host a webinar that goes deeper into the capabilities and possibilities offered by the combination of their technologies. Registration is now open.
