Reinforcing Entrust's commitment to cost-effective strong authentication, Entrust (Nasdaq: ENTU), improves the Entrust IdentityGuard platform with enhanced self-service capabilities, including the Entrust eGrid, an innovative approach to delivering strong second-factor authentication without deploying a physical device.

"Security-conscious organizations require a strong authentication solution that is both affordable and easy to use," said Entrust President and Chief Executive Officer Bill Conner. "We made it our mission to create a multifactor authentication solution that not only provides a broad range of authenticators, but also evolves with enterprise and consumer needs. The enhanced self-service capabilities in the platform -- especially the new eGrid card offering -- provide significant cost-savings and are an excellent alternative to deploying software-based tokens for today's most popular mobile devices."

Entrust's eGrid cards represent a new element to our dynamic multifactor authentication solutions. The advanced soft-grid format enables organizations to implement strong authentication without requiring end-users to carry expensive third-party hardware tokens.

Supporting a range of formats, including Adobe PDF, graphic or text, the eGrid is a highly usable and cost-effective way of delivering strong authentication. The solution also includes the ability to increase protection on PDF grids, leveraging Adobe's rights-management features, including password-based encryption, providing increased security on a highly deployable form factor.

Entrust IdentityGuard easily integrates into an organizations IT environment to protect critical assets. This includes new enhanced self-service capabilities, which provide streamlined enrollment of new users, a critical process for both enterprise and consumer-based deployments. The solution includes self-service management of existing users, providing Web-based management for activities like resetting passwords, changing question and answers, or activating a one-time-passcode token. Completely customizable through templates and Web-based configuration, the enhanced self-service features reduce both initial and ongoing management costs

"A robust, risk-based authentication platform is attractive to organizations that rely upon a large customer base to conduct transactions in the online channel," said George Tubin, Research Director at TowerGroup. "Identifying fraud patterns and suspicious behavior in real-time, and then leveraging an interoperable platform to step up authentication can help eliminate online fraud before it occurs."

Entrust IdentityGuard is recognized as a benchmark for strong multifactor authentication and helps address a range of security and regulatory legislation requirements. Leading financial institutions, enterprises and government agencies have deployed the platform, including DnB Nor, Expedia, Commerce Bank, Bank of New Zealand, Banco Santander Santiago, Goteborg University, Ministry of Economic Development of New Zealand, SCHUFA, Arbetsformedligen, Alaska Law Enforcement Information Sharing System, Vejle Amt, Aristex, Swedish National Labor Market Administration, Skanska and more.

A testament to the strength of the platform, SC Magazine, a well-respected IT security publication, named Entrust an industry innovator for the development and growth of the solution. The accolade stated, "The key factor that makes Entrust and the IdentityGuard visionary is the ideology that multifactor authentication does not have to be complicated to manage or expensive to implement. With inexpensive custom-made grid cards and tokens that cost only about $5 a piece, we expect to see IdentityGuard in more places very soon."

Entrust IdentityGuard enables organizations to layer security -- according to access requirements or the risk of a given transaction -- across diverse users and applications. The platform's authentication options include username and password, IP-geolocation, device, questions and answers, out-of-band one-time passcode (delivered via voice, SMS or e-mail), grid cards, eGrid cards and a range of one-time-password tokens. Entrust IdentityGuard also provides multiple methods of supporting mutual authentication, including picture and caption replay. Integrated with a zero-touch fraud detection solution, as offered by Entrust, Entrust IdentityGuard delivers the right authenticator for the right level of assessed risk, all in a single platform.

The award-winning Entrust IdentityGuard platform can be deployed with Entrust TransactionGuard, Entrust's zero-touch fraud detection solution, to provide organizations with a highly effective and comprehensive solution for risk-based authentication.