PhoneFactor Becomes Company Name and Focus Of Award-Winning Security Innovators

January 6, 2009 - With the country facing its worst economic crisis in decades, and crimes that attack personal and financial data on the rise as desperation mounts, PhoneFactor today announced its New Year’s resolution: The award-winning provider of security products and services is kicking off a new company mission, changing its name, and streamlining its business to focus solely on preventing the most sinister network attacks across all vertical industries.

Founded in 2001 by Tim Sutton, CEO, and Steve Dispensa, CTO, the company has sold its highly-successful remote access line of business, and is now named PhoneFactor, the moniker of its phone-based, two-factor authentication product. When someone keys in an ID and password to log onto a network or website, their phone rings, asking for PIN verification. If a user’s phone rings and they’re not trying to gain access, they simply select the fraud alert option and IT is alerted immediately, access is denied, and the attack is thwarted.

Tens of millions of personal records were compromised in 2008, according to Symantec security research. In just one instance, 50 million personal records were stolen in Taiwan. Hacking is no longer for sport; it’s specifically for financial gain.

“Sophisticated new security threats are driving the need for safer methods of accessing online information,” said PhoneFactor’s CEO Tim Sutton. “Its ‘spy vs. spy’ out there.  Our company is now dedicated to making safe the weakest part of the chain – the user sign in, beginning with our award winning two-factor product, PhoneFactor.”

Identity theft has never been a bigger problem. Both the volume of attacks and the increased level of sophistication create new challenges for IT security professionals. Co-founder and CTO Steve Dispensa closely monitors emerging threats and the impacts on user authentication. Dispensa was among the first to realize the need for transaction-level verification to combat man-in-the-middle attacks against authenticated sessions, which is now a key driver for adoption of PhoneFactor, and has numerous patents pending for related out-of-band authentication protocols.

“These threats are only going to get worse,” said Dispensa. “No industry is safe, and as a market for the data these threats expose continues to develop, new standards will emerge around what constitutes strong authentication. We believe the next frontier is out-of-band authentication with transaction-specific verification. PhoneFactor offers both while maintaining the simplicity of the user experience.”

PhoneFactor has already won several industry awards, including being named one of the Ten Technology Companies to Watch in 2008 by Bank Technology News, a finalist in the Reader Trust Award Category as a Best Second- and Multi-Factor Solution by SC Magazine, and eWEEK Labs Analyst’s Choice Award.

The company’s experience providing secure remote access solutions to thousands of companies, including United Missouri Bank, BKD, and the National Weather Service, along with Sutton and Dispensa’s extensive background in telecommunications, provide a powerful foundation from which to grow the PhoneFactor line of business. The company’s leadership team has best practices knowledge of the issues, from regulation and compliance to integration and deployment, which will be critical to businesses as they implement strong authentication for their employees and customers.

Since its release in July 2007, PhoneFactor has secured more than a million logins by thousands of users worldwide and is trusted by leading companies such as Loomis Armored, West Corporation, and the US Navy Exchange Command. “We’re excited about the trajectory the company is on and potential impact our technology can have,” said Sutton. “I can envision a day when a simple phone call is used to secure every login just like a password is today.”