Security News
Avatier Corporation has released Avatier for ServiceNow, the latest addition to the Avatier Anywhere platform. Avatier for ServiceNow is a certified ServiceNow app that adds a unified, passwordless approach to Identity Access Management with single sign-on to the Now platform to improve workforce efficiency.
Microsoft has said it will add end-to-end encryption for some one-to-one Teams calls later this year - and urged folks to move away from using passwords with Azure AD. The Teams improvements, announced at the tech giant's Ignite conference this week, will be available "To commercial customers in preview in the first half of this year." Video conferencing rival Zoom offers end-to-end encryption with a few caveats and additional steps, and that appears to be more or less the approach Microsoft will take, too.
Axiad, a provider of a cloud-based passwordless authentication solutions, has raised $20 million in growth funding from private equity firm Invictus Growth Partners. According to Yves Audebert, co-founder and co-CEO of Santa Clara, Calif.-based Axiad, the company has been bootstrapped and cash flow positive for more than ten years, with the company saying it protects more than 2.5 million enterprise credentials for hundreds of customers.
Beyond Identity, a security startup on a quest to eliminate passwords, today announced a $75 million Series B funding round, bringing the total investment in the company to $105 million. Launched in April by internet icons Jim Clark and Tom Jermoluk, Beyond Identity has launched a certificate-based authentication and authorization solution that eliminates the need for passwords.
Passwords are a constant struggle for businesses and IT departments. There are other ways to stay safe.
Whether decreasing the number of passwords required through single sign-on or eliminating the password altogether in favor of a strong authentication factor, the priority is on the workforce experience. At the same time, we've asked users to create longer passwords, more complex passwords, unique passwords.
While passwords may not be going away completely, 92 percent of respondents believe passwordless authentication is the future of their organization, according to a LastPass survey. Passwordless authentication reduces password related risks by enabling users to login to devices and applications without the need to type in a password.
"The better way to protect the user is to provide a more intuitive, more friendly experience and a more secure way through passwordless," Chik says. Remote working is a core scenario for Microsoft customers in enterprise, government and education for the rest of this calendar year, the next 12 months and likely beyond, Chik notes: "71% of employees and managers want to continue to work from home, especially when we don't have COVID vaccination, but even in a post-pandemic world, people want the flexibility of being able to work from home." That's helping to put security, identity and MFA in the top five investment areas for security leaders, although CISOs need to improve security for remote workers without reducing their productivity.
You can do that with the Windows 10 May 2020 Update, aka Windows 10 2004. First, make sure you're running Windows 10 version 2004.
Learn how to enable passwordless SSH authentication on both Linux and macOS. You probably secure shell into your Linux servers throughout the day. Hopefully, you've set those servers up such that you're using SSH Key Authentication.