Clickatell partners with RSA to provide on-demand authentication using cell phones

Clickatell - & RSA on demand authentication

Redwood City, CA - Clickatell, global provider of mobile messaging solutions, today announced that it has partnered with RSA, The Security Division of EMC, to enable the delivery of two-factor authentication to mobile devices, via SMS.

The results of this technological partnership were recently demonstrated by the two companies at the RSA® Conference in San Francisco, CA. "Security needs are evolving rapidly, and RSA is focused on meeting our customers' needs for a truly flexible, scalable and intuitive authentication system to suit all scenarios and demands," said Sam Curry, Vice President, Product Marketing & Product Management, for RSA's Identity and Access Assurance Group. "Given the critical nature of enabling remote access and continuity during emergencies or outages, we need a technology partner with global reach and the ability to reliably deliver enterprise-grade operations and quality of service. We are very pleased to be working with Clickatell."

Providing timely and direct messages in seconds, SMS is the ideal form of communication to help enterprises and government agencies provide one-time passwords to mobile employees, contractors and partners. And, given the ubiquity of cell phones as a device we carry at all times, the mobile device is a reliable and convenient method of reaching the intended party. RSA SecurID® one-time passwords expire after a brief time period making them ideal to provide to users via SMS. Pieter de Villiers, CEO of Clickatell, commented, "The technology partnership between RSA and Clickatell combines two leading forces in security and mobile messaging respectively, to provide proven solutions to global customers.

Having started out almost ten years ago, Clickatell has 8,300 enterprise customers in the US and around the globe across many industries including banking, healthcare, government services, insurance, and more. When it comes to making critical and secure mobile transactions, Clickatell understands what customers need to be able to connect, transact and communicate anytime, anywhere." Two-factor authentication combines 'something you know' with 'something you have,' providing a more reliable and secure level of user identity assurance than static and reusable passwords.

As a result of Clickatell's collaboration with RSA, users who don't typically carry an RSA SecurID two-factor authentication token can now receive an RSA-generated one-time password via text message directly to their cell phone. This allows for immediate and secure access to the corporate network, without requiring physical tokens to be assigned or software to be installed. In addition, this technology partnership provides enterprises with a business continuity option that is designed to enable broad-based secure remote access to corporate resources even during a business disruption scenario.