ECCU recently began developing a new Web portal to expand its online presence and provide more robust services to its customers. As part of the upgrade, ECCU wanted to replace its existing authentication solution and chose Arcot's A-OK On Demand Cloud Authentication Service. The service includes Arcot's WebFort® versatile authentication, which provides strong authentication to prevent fraud when accessing online accounts and other secure documents, products, and services.

"Security is a very important strategic imperative for us. We evaluated a range of options and Arcot A-OK On Demand provided the best fit for our requirements," said Alan Weisenberger, ECCU's Vice President of Technology Services. "This solution meets all of our needs for strong, software-only PKI security, user experience, flexibility, cost-effectiveness, and ease of integration and deployment.

"Arcot's proven cloud-based authentication solutions support a wide range of authentication and integration options. And Arcot's professional services did a great job helping us implement the SAML 2.0 integration with our identity-management and web portal platforms," Weisenberger added. "The ease of being able to integrate a cloud-based authentication solution with our on-premises, single-sign-on solution was key to meeting our needs."

ECCU is a banking resource for churches, Christian schools and other evangelical ministries throughout the United States. With more than $3.2 billion in total assets under management, ECCU offers a full range of financial services and solutions to help evangelical Christian ministries better manage their financial resources.

ECCU selected A-OK because it deftly balances security and a user-friendly design. The ArcotID software-centric design frees ECCU customers to log in from multiple locations. If they log in from PCs or other devices that don't have their ArcotIDs, ECCU can enable their customers to be authenticated quickly by answerswering security questions or by entering a one-time password that's delivered to an e-mail account or their mobile phones via SMS.

That flexibility is convenient for ECCU members, who are just as likely to be accessing their accounts from church PCs as from Internet cafés in distant missionary locations. The ArcotID software credential blocks man-in-the-middle attacks and other threats, providing peace of mind for ECCU account holders, no matter where and which devices they use to log in.

ECCU also selected A-OK because it was cost-effective, with the ability to scale up to millions of users, providing ECCU with ample room for growth.

"Arcot exceeded our expectations, not just in terms of how their solution protects our members, but also for their ability to meet our tight schedule and customization needs," said Weisenberger. "ECCU continually looks for new ways to meet our members' needs with solutions that are very secure and yet user-friendly. Arcot has been instrumental in helping us do that."

"Online banking is constantly under attack, but few banks and credit unions can afford to keep throwing money at the problem," said Ram Varadarajan, President and CEO of Arcot Systems, Inc. "Arcot A-OK provides financial institutions with a cost-effective, scalable and user-friendly solution for protecting their accountholders against fraud anywhere in the world regardless of which device they prefer to use to access their accounts. We are very pleased to partner with an industry leader like ECCU to bring them compelling value. ECCU joins a long list of marquee financial services customers who are benefiting from Arcot's proven cloud-based authentication solutions".