“Our customers seek simplified, cost-effective central authentication services that accommodate both roving and single-device users without having to issue and manage tokens or pay personal data plan costs for users to use a personal device for work. The fact that SAML is ubiquitous makes getting more value from a BIO-key investment much more simple.” – Jim Sullivan, SVP Strategy and Compliance, BIO-key

BIO-key has adapted its ID Director software for SAML (“Security Assertion Markup Language”), the popular open standard for exchanging authentication data between service providers and identity applications and platforms.

The new ID Director for SAML is compatible with the SAML 2.0 framework, allowing organizations that use the standard to easily deploy on-premise or cloud-based biometric authentication care of BIO-key. As BIO-key explained in a statement announcing the new solution, it brings BIO-key’s multi-factor authentication solutions “to hundreds of SAML-enabled cloud services and leading Identity and Access Management (IAM) platforms.”

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–Listen to our recent audio interview with Jim Sullivan, SVP Strategy and Compliance, BIO-key–

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Elaborating further, BIO-key Strategy and Compliance VP Jim Sullivan explained that mainstream multi-factor authentication identity providers tend to rely on more traditional authentication factors like push notifications and USB tokens, or to rely on smartphone-based biometric authentication when it’s supported. Such approaches “are cumbersome for end-users and also create challenges for enterprises with roving workforces, such as call centers, healthcare, retail and manufacturing,” he said, whereas BIO-key’s solutions can support central authentication services in all of these contexts and more.

“The fact that SAML is ubiquitous makes getting more value from a BIO-key investment much more simple,” he said.

In announcing ID Director for SAML, BIO-key also noted that its partner Microsoft, which supports ID Director for Windows, is demonstrating BIO-key’s fingerprint scanner solutions at this week’s RSA Conference in San Francisco, which runs from March 4th to 8th.

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(Originally posted on FindBiometrics)