The companies have announced that PassMark’s mutual-authentication systems will be offered by S1 in the US, where Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council guidelines are forcing online banks to implement strong authentication by the end of the year.
PassMark’s service uses risk scoring at the back end to help banks authenticate consumers. It also enables users to authenticate the bank by allowing them to choose a unique personal image to be displayed when they log in.
S1, which has its own share of financial problems and recently admitted it is exploring strategic alternatives, said the service meets the FFIEC guidelines without complicating the user experience with hardware tokens, a market RSA dominates.
