Secure Computing Releases Mobile Access Authentication

Secure Computing on Monday announced software designed to let corporate users securely access their enterprise network, data and applications from their handheld device or laptop with two-factor authentication.

SafeWord MobilePass generates single-use passwords that are never employed more than once, protecting against stolen or compromised passwords, officials say. Passwords are generated on the user's device to access the corporate VPN, Citrix applications and Web applications. These one-time passwords used in conjunction with the mobile device provide two-factor authentication, the company says.

Relying on one-time passwords frees users from having to remember permanent passwords and from having to carry hardware tokens with them. Users launch the MobilePass application on their PC or laptop to retrieve their one-time password.

SafeWord MobilePass works with a wide variety of laptops and devices, the company says, so corporations have the convenience of running the new authentication software on existing hardware, including BlackBerryies, Palm, Windows, J2ME-enabled devices and Windows notebooks.

The product is an update of Secure Computing's SofToken product for authenticating PCs on a network, plus an update to the company's MobilePass technology that provides one-time passwords via Short Message Service (SMS) messaging. The new SafeWord MobilePass will gain SMS features in the future, the company says,

SafeWord MobilePass is priced starting at $18 per user, and requires customers have Secure Computing's SafeWord PremierAccess two-factor authentication platform installed.