ActivCard Enhances Authentication for Remote Access Over Web
March 19, 2003

Remote access identity management vendor ActivCard is moving aggressively to gain more share of the U.S. market with the announcement of new versions that add strong authentication to standard Web applications, and two-factor authentication to Microsoft Outlook users checking their email via a browser.

ActivCard is building on its French roots in the smart card business, to offer large organizations secure remote access with technology that potentially consolidates multiple authentication systems, saving on a range of provisioning costs including the renewal of hardware tokens with batteries that cannot be replaced.

The company's ActivPack AAA Server v.5.2 and ActivPack for Windows v4.5 offer: new Web access agents (for Microsoft IIS, SunOne, Netscape, Apache), Microsoft Outlook web access; Windows Domain Login Agent for Windows NT and 2000; Citrix Metaframe ICA and NFuse login; and additional authentication choices of a software-based token, or 64K Java card support.

In addition, the company announced a fixed-price service of $22,500 to replace competitive leased token alternatives tokens with the ActivPack, installed and configured. ActivPack is priced at $100 per user for the server license, and $38 per client side token, with volume discounts. A deployment of 2,000 would cost approximately $100,000 for the server software and $50,000 for the tokens.

In an ROI analysis provided by ActivCard, the five-year cost of a 2,000-user deployment would be $165,000 for the software and token costs, and approximately $500,000 in the "soft" costs of provisioning and maintaining the system. This is 20% to 30% less expensive than the leading alternatives on the market today, the company states.

"We're getting more requests from proposals from major corporations who understand this story," says Andy Smith, product marketing manager with ActivCard. "This is a major change from a year ago."

ActivCard does a robust business with the U.S. military, which has bought over one million of the firm's smart cards for remote and local physical access.