Vanguard Integrity Professionals, the leader in enterprise
security solutions, today announced that First National Bank of
South Africa (FNB) is using Vanguard ez/Token software and
ActivIdentity tokens to help reduce fraud.
This solution enables two-factor authentication for all users
with high-risk access. FNB evaluated a number of offerings, but
chose ez/Token based on the product's simple installation, minimal
customization requirements and easy integration with the bank's
existing Vanguard product deployments.
"Vanguard ez/Token was the best solution to provide us with the
strong authentication steps we required," said Timothy Player,
information security consultant at FNB. "Vanguard helps us maintain
the highest level of security for our internal staff, and has also
proven it is committed to enhancing its products to meet our
specific requirements."
FNB, the oldest bank in South Africa and a division of FirstRand
Bank Limited, has subsidiaries in Swaziland, Botswana, Lesotho and
Namibia and provides a full range of products and services for
individual, commercial, corporate and public sector banking. FNB
deployed Vanguard ez/Token, through South African distributor Blue
Turtle Technologies, to enforce accountability and mitigate the
effect of keystroke logging, which captures user keystrokes
(passwords) for future fraudulent use. Because ez/Token replaces
passwords with constantly-changing token passcodes, keystroke
logging is no longer an issue of concern for FNB.
"FNB is a strong example of a financial institution taking
responsibility to protect customer information by reducing the risk
of fraudulent activities," said Ronn Bailey, founder, CEO and CTO of
Vanguard. "We are pleased to have worked with our long-term partner,
Blue Turtle, to provide a solution and local support that satisfies
FNB's requirements for a more secure banking environment."
Vanguard ez/Token provides two-factor authentication capabilities
that combat and reduce identity theft and can be used by financial
institutions around the world to comply with many security and
regulatory guidelines. For example, ez/token enables financial
institutions in the U.S. to comply with the Federal Financial
Institutions Examination Council (FFIEC) guidelines that require the
authentication of customers accessing Internet-based financial
services. ez/Token software allows users to authenticate through
either RSA SecurID or ActivIdentity tokens to the IBM zSeries Server
or any other application currently using RACF authentication.
Vanguard's two-factor authentication solution provides a more secure
alternative than the usual RACF user ID/password combination by
replacing the password with a new, one-time passcode that is
randomly generated every 60 seconds.
