Beyond Identity - Experts & Thought Leaders

Beyond Identity, the pioneering provider of passwordless, phishing-resistant MFA, announced the launch of The Passkey Journey – a free, GDPR-compliant tool built to help development and user experience (UX) teams understand, plan, and optimise different end-user authentication experiences. The tool solves key challenges around passkey adoption and offers much-needed clarity into the pain of UX inconsistencies across browsers and devices with just a few lines of code. FIDO standards Passkeys are a highly secure, easy-to-use authentication alternative to passwords that allow users to use their device biometrics, such as fingerprints or facial identification, or a PIN or pattern. Built on FIDO standards, passkeys are asymmetric key pairs tied to a user account and a registered website or app. However, a user’s ability to use passkeys depends on the browser and device they’re on and whether they support the WebAuthn protocol. The complexity of browser support for passkeys – aka the “browser dilemma” – has created blind spots for development teams in terms of UX impact, implementation lift, and passkey deployment strategy. UX scenario The report provides deployment guidance to optimise the rollout of passkeys The Passkey Journey provides a short JavaScript snippet that, when integrated into a website, analyses visitors’ browsers and devices to determine WebAuthn support and provides a dynamic report of the user base's ability to use passkeys. Developers, product managers, UX designers, and product security engineers will now have access to a detailed breakdown of the percentage of website visitors that can use passkeys with biometrics, with only security keys, or cannot use passkeys at all. Additionally, the report shows clickable UX flows to provide context for each UX scenario. Finally, the report provides deployment recommendations to optimise the rollout of passkeys, close the technical gap, and enable more users to use passkeys. User authentication “Passkeys present a pivotal moment in authentication, offering a frictionless and secure answer to the persistent challenges of user authentication. But with platforms quickly evolving, development teams face the challenge of solving for inconsistent user experiences across browsers and devices,” said Jasson Casey, CTO of Beyond Identity. He adds, “We’re excited to present a simple tool that can help teams quickly understand their users’ ability to use passkeys for authentication and make informed decisions around deployment.” UX impact UX teams have a free, simple, and transformative tool that offers greater visibility With The Passkey Journey, development and UX teams have a free, simple, and transformative tool that offers greater visibility into their user bases’ passkey readiness.  Not only will those who leverage the tool better understand the differences in device and browser support of WebAuthn, but they’ll also have information at their fingertips to design passkeys more quickly, accurately forecast UX impact, and integrate passkeys with greater confidence and speed. Efforts of FIDO Alliance “Driving passkey adoption is a critical goal for the FIDO Alliance. Over the past year, we have published research-backed UX guidelines to support consumer deployments and best practice deployment papers to enable enterprise utilisation,” said Andrew Shikiar, Executive Director and CMO of the FIDO Alliance. He adds, “Beyond Identity has been a valuable contributor to FIDO Alliance’s efforts to resolve deployment challenges for companies looking to support passkeys. The Passkey Journey is a valuable development tool that stands to help enterprises make informed decisions on their passkey deployments.”

Beyond Identity, the provider of passwordless, phishing-resistant MFA, announces the formal release of ‘Zero Trust Authentication’ (ZTA) as a subcategory of zero trust technology, together with the launch of the Worldwide Zero Trust Leadership series of events that will run throughout 2023. Bringing together security technologies and integrators, Beyond Identity, Palo Alto Networks, CrowdStrike, Optiv, World Wide Technology, Guidepoint Security, BeyondTrust, Ping Identity and Climb Channel Solutions will enable organisations to move towards secure authentication designed to advance the zero trust strategies of global 5000 companies. Continuous authentication capabilities Zero Trust Authentication has been developed in response to the failure of traditional authentication methods – a problem exacerbated by the increasing number of cyberattacks. Adopting Zero Trust Authentication will allow organisations to overcome the limitations of passwords Adopting Zero Trust Authentication will allow organisations to overcome the limitations of passwords and legacy multi-factor authentication (MFA) and implement more robust security strategies. To achieve this, the Zero Trust Authentication approach includes components such as Beyond Identity's risk scoring and continuous authentication capabilities, which significantly enhances the level of protection offered. Access management vulnerabilities "In working with leaders across the security ecosystem, it became apparent to us that the industry needs to formally bring identity and access management into the security fold to continuously deliver the highest level of security around users and devices,” said Tom Jermoluk, Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder of Beyond Identity. He adds, “We are bringing together the leaders from the essential technology categories to ensure authentication decisions are risk based and continuously informed with signals from the wealth of existing cybersecurity tooling. Through close technology collaboration and now go-to-market collaboration in this Zero Trust Leadership series, we are delivering strong authentication built for an ‘always on’ zero trust world coupled with the practical advice and best practices so that enterprises can finally close identity and access management vulnerabilities.” Weak authentication factors Identity and authentication vulnerabilities remain the single largest source of ransomware" "Year after year, Identity and authentication vulnerabilities remain the single largest source of ransomware and security breaches, so something has to fundamentally change to close this vulnerability and enable organisations to meet the security mandates issued by the White House, NIST and CISA,” said Dr. Chase Cunningham, better known as a co-creator of the Zero Trust Extended framework and as Dr. Zero Trust. He adds, “The Zero Trust Authentication approach eliminates weak authentication factors and optimises user and device access decisions with risk signals from a variety of installed cyber security tooling because Zero Trust is a team sport, and this enables organisations to effectively shut the door on the single largest initial attack vectors adversaries routinely rely on." Gaining practical insights The Zero Trust Leadership Series kicks off with the ‘The Bridge to Zero Trust’ virtual event on March 15th, 2023, which will bring together zero trust industry leaders, including CISOs from organisations, technology providers, advisors and solution providers. The Zero Trust Leadership Series kicks off with the ‘The Bridge to Zero Trust’ virtual event on March 15th, 2023 Attendees will learn how to combine identity, authentication, network architecture, endpoint detection and response technologies to strengthen their cybersecurity efforts and gain practical insights and best practices that will enable Identity and Security teams to stay ahead of attackers and out of the headlines and advance their zero trust security efforts. Security infrastructure investments Among the organisations supporting Zero Trust Authentication are identity pioneers Ping Identity and Beyond Trust, cybersecurity pioneer Palo Alto Networks and CrowdStrike, security integrators World Wide Technology and Optiv, technology distributor Climb Channel Solutions, and industry associations including the Cloud Security Alliance and the FIDO (Fast Identity Online) Alliance. “Delivering continuous verification of identity — user and devices — is essential to meeting the promise of zero trust,” said Jay Bretzmann, Research Vice President, Security Products at IDC. “Beyond Identity has taken the approach to utilise signals from security infrastructure in near real-time to raise the security standard and capitalise on existing security infrastructure investments in EDR and SASE tools.” Accelerating effective and leading cybersecurity programs requires a zero trust approach" “Accelerating effective and leading cybersecurity programs requires a zero trust approach,” said Marcos Christodonte II, Global CISO of CDW. “The notion of Zero Trust Authentication represents a significant advancement in authentication security—coupling identity-centric and network-centric capabilities to provide a comprehensive, policy-driven approach that continuously safeguards data and systems amidst a tenacious cyber threat landscape.” Current identity practices Beyond Identity, together with zero trust leaders, has defined a set of practical requirements that any organisation can use to measure their current identity practices and adopt to insulate their workforces and customers from everyday attacks. These include: Passwordless – No use of passwords or other shared secrets, as these can easily be obtained from users, captured on networks, or hacked from databases. Phishing resistant – No opportunity to obtain codes, magic links, or other authentication factors through phishing, adversary-in-the-middle, or other attacks. Capable of validating user devices – Able to ensure that requesting devices are bound to a user and authorised to access information assets and applications. Capable of assessing device security posture – Able to determine whether devices comply with security policies by checking that appropriate security settings are enabled, and security software is actively running. Capable of analysing many types of risk signals – Able to ingest and analyse data from endpoints and security and IT management tools. Continuous risk assessment – Able to evaluate risk throughout a session rather than relying on one-time authentication. Integrated with the security infrastructure – Integrating with a variety of tools in the security infrastructure to improve risk detection, accelerate responses to suspicious behaviours, and improve audit and compliance reporting. Zero trust authentication Beyond Identity is the only solution addressing all key zero trust authentication requirements. Together with its partners, it is bringing this practical advice directly to customers and channel partners, starting with the virtual event, to major events like RSA and Black Hat, and key cities across North America and Europe over the balance of 2023. For the industry at large, it's delivering a category-defining book, titled Zero Trust Authentication, which details the specific capabilities, requirements, policies and best practices to materially advance zero trust.

Beyond Identity, the provider of passwordless, phishing-resistant MFA, reported it has tripled its annual revenue in 2022. Further growth was demonstrated by workforce milestones, industry relationships, and FIDO2 certification. “The results we have attained during 2022 has been an incredible validation of our mission to transform how corporations approach cybersecurity, improve authentication, and dramatically reduce risk,” said Thomas Jermoluk, CEO and Co-Founder of Beyond Identity. He adds, “What we’ve accomplished here is a strong sign that we are filling a critical industry need, that organisations are ready to embrace passwordless MFA, and adopt advanced authentication as a fundamental part of their zero trust strategy.” Security posture checks Just two years after launch, and less than a year after achieving a $1.1B valuation, Beyond Identity closed FY22 having tripled both its revenue and customer base when compared year-over-year. The company also transitioned its North American go-to-market strategy to a 100% channel-first approach. To support this accelerating growth and continued innovation, Beyond Identity has now nearly 200 employees with over 60% of the team in engineering roles. Beyond Identity’s FIDO2 certification With FIDO-based solutions now required by the U.S. government, Beyond Identity’s FIDO2 certification is a powerful affirmation of the company’s leadership in the passwordless space. Beyond Identity’s advanced authentication platform dramatically simplifies the adoption of next generation phishing-resistant MFA. Extending FIDO2 with comprehensive device security posture checks and an advanced policy engine enables customers to adopt continuous risk-based authentication–ensuring only authorised users and appropriately secure devices gain or maintain access to apps and resources. Identity management footprint Beyond Identity’s integration with Zscaler also allows customers to actively stop attackers In 2022, the company extended its identity management footprint by adding single sign-on (SSO) integrations with Google Cloud, CyberArk, OneLogin by One Identity, Shibboleth, and VMware. Beyond Identity also minted technology alliances and completed integrations with MDM, EDR, and SIEM products to bring an unprecedented Zero Trust Authentication capability to its customers.  Beyond Identity’s integration with Zscaler also allows customers to actively stop attackers and drop access for suspicious users or devices. The platform now incorporates risk signals from mobile device management products including JAMF, InTune, Airwatch, and MobileIron, and Crowdstrike’s Falcon EDR. These integrations enable companies to leverage existing detection and response tools for advanced protection. Secure digital landscape A newly minted strategic partnership with World Wide Technology (WWT) includes deployment of Beyond Identity’s platform internally to its 8,000 employees, and leveraging WWT’s global reach as a channel partner. These critical relationships will accelerate adoption of passwordless, phishing-resistant MFA and unlock a more innovative and secure digital landscape. Beyond Identity shows no sign of slowing down in the new year. The company’s leaders are actively working with additional partners to further define and clarify the critical capabilities and methods used to bring a zero trust approach to authentication.