PhoneFactor and public wi-fi
Most public wi-fi hotspots are of the "open" variety. That means that, in general, everything you send back and forth over the air can easily be seen by anyone else on the same hotspot. Worse yet, lots of computers have software that attempts auto-login to sensitive things, like mail servers, as soon as a new network connection becomes available. This is a great way for attackers to harvest usernames and passwords from unsuspecting public wi-fi users.
PhoneFactor is here to help. With PhoneFactor, any use of a stolen password will cause your phone (not the bad guy’s) to ring. This does two things for you. The obvious one is that you have an opportunity to deny the bad guy access, which is good. The less obvious one is that you know, for an absolute fact, that your password has been compromised, so you can take action to correct the problem.
PhoneFactor is one of the only systems in the world that can do both. And in this increasingly connected wireless world of ours, PhoneFactor’s extra security is becoming more and more critical.
-Steve
Steve – we are a start up payment processing company with many years in the payment industry – we will have to comply with PCI regulations – would the PhoneFactor solution comply with PCI regs for 2 factor authentication?
Thanks
Hi Gene,
Yes, this will qualify as two-factor for you. Regulators typically certify implementations, as opposed to products, but we can help you through that certification process.
Contact me off-blog and I’d be glad to run through the details with you. You can also email phonefactor-phonefactor-net (replace hyphens with at and dot), and I will respond.
Thanks!