Passwordless authentication vendors cuddle up for market warmth and fatter revenues

Looking for an edge in challenging economic conditions, four cybersecurity vendors are pairing up in the hunt for more government contracts.

Multi-factor authentication provider Nok Nok Labs has said it will work with Carahsoft to boost phishing resistance among the government IT contractor’s customers. The relationship would give Nok Nok more visibility among buyers and Carahsoft could market a fuller hand of services.

The other pairing is between United States-based SurePassID, a multi-factor authentication subscription service, and Switzerland-based Swissbit, maker of authentication hardware.

California-based Nok Nok will get a slot among resellers of Virginia-based Carahsoft. That will be a valuable showcase if federal government spending continues to increase. The U.S. Department of Commerce, in its gross domestic product estimate for the first quarter of 2023, says defense and nondefense outlays rose.

On top of that, the White House has put government employees on notice: Phishing-resistant multi-factor authentication has to a more significant tool by the end of 2024.

Carahsoft also recently signed partnerships with ID.me and with Okta and Socure to address public sector digital identity needs.

Government agencies and big enterprises are the quarry for Swissbit and SurePassID, too.

They are marketing Swissbit’s iShield Key Pro authentication hardware with SurePassID’s authentication server. Executives say the combination speeds phishing-resistant, passwordless multi-factor authentication in public and private cloud environments and air-gapped networks.

The security products do not use public cloud gateways and orchestration layers while adding FIDO2-level authentication domain logins and apps.

“Our joint solution with Swissbit,” says Mark Poidomani, SurePassID’s CEO, “provides phishing-resistant, passwordless user authentication natively and wherever it is needed, along with the global scalability and 99.999 percent availability” being demanded at the top end of the market.

Article Topics

biometrics  |  Carahsoft  |  Nok Nok Labs  |  passwordless authentication  |  SurePassID