Arcot and Adobe Make Strong Authentication and Digital Signing a Reality for Consumers

An August 2006 Gartner survey concluded that 46.8 percent of online consumers have changed their behavior because of security incidents. At the same time, however, most consumers don't want much change in how they authenticate online which is typically through a standard username/password interface.

The challenge lies in providing the security consumers want with the same verification behavior they have become accustomed to. Security must come without forcing the consumer to change their behavior by downloading special software or forcing them to carry cumbersome tokens.

Arcot and Adobe have taken the challenge and together devised solutions that make consumer authentication simple yet strong. There were two main problems to solve to make this a reality.

• Provide strong authentication and digital signing using the familiar username/password interface.
• Provide a strong authentication client that the consumer already had on their desktop.

Maintaining the user experience

Arcot solved this problem several years ago by inventing a unique, 100 percent software, two-factor strong authentication solution. Arcot WebFort, combined with the ArcotID, adds the strength of PKI to any login process while maintaining the simplicity of a username/password interface without any additional elements of a PKI infrastructure to install or deploy. WebFort provides the lowest cost of ownership of any two-factor authentication solution on the market today.

Providing readily available client

Adobe Reader is installed on millions of computers worldwide. By embedding the Arcot digital signing technology in Adobe Reader 8 and Adobe Acrobat 8, consumers have digital signing technology available on their desktops, ready to activate with no special downloads and no software maintenance headaches for the online provider.

In addition, Arcot extended transparent, strong authentication to the desktop by releasing the ArcotID client in Adobe Flash. Because Adobe Flash is virtually ubiquitous — already installed on more than 98 percent of desktops around the world — the new Arcot solution makes two-factor authentication convenient for users and cost effective for IT departments to mass deploy.

To further cement the close partnership, Adobe demonstrated the compatibility of Arcot authentication technology within its recently released beta version of Adobe Integrated Runtime (AIR).