NetSuite announced on Wednesday that it is bringing CA Technologies‘ CA Arcot WebFort authentication security package to its two-factor authentication service.
We’ve all got countless usernames and passwords to remember, but despite that, they’re often not enough to ensure that confidential or proprietary data stays that way. For regulatory approval (and sanity), multi-factor authentication adds that second step.
NetSuite’s solution pairs a cryptographic token (on the Open Authentication, or OATH, standard) with the conventional username/password combination — or as it likes to say, something you “have” plus something you “know.”
It works like this: your administrator assigns the tokens to employees based on their roles. Once activated, the user will see a one-time, automatically-generated key that is generated — and entered — each time he or she logs in.
NetSuite has offered two-factor authentication for years, but today’s announcement adds CA Technologies’ authentication to that as a module. The idea: as a cloud solutions provider, NetSuite can scale the technology and make it available for those who traditionally don’t have access to such strong security.
“With this release, we have taken the infrastructure from Computer Associates — CA’s Arcot WebFort product — and are running it in our datacenter and making it available with their backing infrastructure as a module,” NetSuite’s Paul Turner said. “We’re taking high-end authentication infrastructure and making it available to growing and mid-sized companies.”
NetSuite says the deal will help it offer enterprise-level security as a service across ERP, CRM, e-commerce and PSA. It’s the latest security feature to experience the trickle-down effect from big corporations to smaller companies.
Editor’s note: The original version of this story indicated that CA Technologies was adding NetSuite authentication; it’s the other way around. We regret the error.
