Beyond Identity today announced that it will provide access to its industry-leading, passwordless identity platform free of charge to any company that wants to offer its employees or customers a completely frictionless and fundamentally secure authentication experience. Free-tier customers will have full access to the Beyond Identity support team and can deploy to an unlimited number of users without any time or usage limits. Free customers can also turn on additional paid features at any time to further strengthen organizational security.
Starting with Bill Gates’ famous RSA Conference 2004 prediction of the password’s demise, the “shared secret” has continued to not only be the bane of organizational security, but also a secret seemingly shared by and with everyone – from software flaws at Spotify, to a driver of account takeover surges, to the SolarWinds update server’s embarrassingly simple credential. The security resource site Have I Been Pwned? has collected more than half a billion passwords that have been compromised in breaches. With entire markets established to create, backstop, and shield passwords, the reality is that the password is a foundational and critical liability for users and businesses alike – a liability that has drastically altered and expanded its risk profile during the pandemic.
“Having helped deliver the commercial Internet to the public with my longtime business partner Jim Clark, we feel a sense of responsibility for the proliferation of passwords,” said TJ Jermoluk, CEO of Beyond Identity. “As businesses pursue digital transformation, further accelerate cloud computing initiatives, and settle into the new ‘work from anywhere’ reality, they are facing an onslaught of cyberattacks exploiting passwords. We decided the best way to help was to provide a completely free and fully supported solution, so the community can overcome inertia and finally usher in the passwordless identity era.”
Unlike password managers or legacy, multi-factor authentication (MFA) methods that introduce friction and don’t actually eliminate passwords, Beyond Identity’s advanced passwordless identity platform increases both usability and security, lowering cost and complexity while removing friction for users. The platform supports all major operating systems and is built upon the mature and proven technology (TLS and X.509 certificates) that underpins trillions of dollars in digital transactions daily. Beyond Identity is simple to deploy – as part of enterprise authentication systems or for customer-facing applications – and requires no coding or changes to existing identity infrastructures.
The Beyond Identity free tier is part of the company’s advanced, highly available, and massively scalable platform that eliminates passwords for both workforces and customer applications. Free-tier customers will have access to the Beyond Identity support team during business hours, not just “community support.” Enterprises that wish to use advanced capabilities can simply turn them on when and if they choose, and because free customers are on the same platform as advanced customers, no “migration” is required.
The advanced tier includes:
- A 24x7x365 support option.
- Advanced authenticator features to collect granular device security posture data.
- Continuous authentication and enforcement of risk-based policies.
- Mobile device management (MDM) and endpoint detection and response (EDR) integrations for additional risk signals and advanced policy enforcement.
- Simplified compliance reporting with a complete/immutable record of all transactions (individual and device identity, plus all risk signals).
- Integrations with identity management, cybersecurity, and compliance tooling.
For more information on the free and premium options, please visit the Beyond Identity website.
About Beyond Identity
Headquartered in New York City, Beyond Identity was founded by industry legends Jim Clark and Tom Jermoluk to eliminate passwords and radically change the way the world logs in. Funded by leading investors, including Koch Disruptive Technologies (KDT) and New Enterprise Associates (NEA), Beyond Identity’s mission is to empower the next generation of secure digital business. By replacing passwords with fundamentally secure X.509-based certificates and enabling continuous, risk-based authentication, the company’s patents-pending approach creates an extended Chain of Trust that dramatically improves security and provides a frictionless login experience. Beyond Identity’s cloud-native solution and advanced, standards-based architecture drastically reduces implementation time and costs – enabling customers to increase business velocity, implement new business models, and reduce operating costs. Visit www.beyondidentity.com for more information.
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