FBI Cyber Task Force Advises Businesses to Incorporate Biometric Factors to Mitigate Multi-Factor Authentication Risk
October 10 2019 - 07:58AM
BIO-key International, Inc. (NASDAQ: BKYI), an innovative provider
of biometric authentication and security solutions, today said
several media reports announced that the FBI Cyber Task Force
recently issued a four-page Private Industry Notice that recommends
the addition of biometric factors and behavioral information checks
to multi-factor authentication (MFA) approaches, citing known and
exploited vulnerabilities of token and phone-based multi-factor
authentication methods.
The FBI’s notice, issued as part of National Cybersecurity
Awareness Month, provides important validation for the use of
biometric hardware and software authentication solutions such as
those developed by BIO-key. The FBI’s report has received broad
media attention including Forbes, ZDNet and
BankInfoSecurity.com. BIO-key’s authentication solutions are
unique in the market in that they allow interoperability among over
30 different fingerprint scanners from a variety of manufacturers
and are available as a turnkey Windows Active Directory
authentication solution for enterprises, as well as an
authentication platform module ready to serve our federated IAM
partners’ customers.
The FBI reported that a large variety of schemes and attacks are
being used by cyber actors to defeat multi-factor authentication,
including social engineering, SIM swapping and account-takeover
malware such as Muraena and NecroBrowser.
The FBI’s mitigation recommendations are simple:
- Educate users and administrators to identify social engineering
trickery.
- Consider using additional or more complex forms of multi-factor
authentication for users and administrators such as biometrics or
behavioral authentication methods.
The FBI recommendation comes after its review of victim reports
to the Internet Crime Complaint Center and actual criminal attacks
against mainstream multi-factor authentication methods. The notice
marks the first time since 2015 that the FBI has expanded upon its
initial recommendation to use multi-factor
authentication.
“The FBI’s report and recommendation is so powerful because it
comes from their unique vantage point from the front lines,
fighting cybercrime and investigating real breaches, not from an
ivory tower or hardware token industry standards group,” said Jim
Sullivan, BIO-key’s SVP of Strategy and Compliance. “The FBI has
one goal, which is the prevention of cybercrime, and that makes
them a very credible source,” Sullivan added.
“Biometrics should not be an afterthought in a
comprehensive Identity Access Management (IAM) strategy,” said Mike
DePasquale, BIO-key CEO. “It should be a core design factor in an
IAM platform, for end-user authentication, provisioning and
governance. BIO-key offers our customers a comprehensive set
of biometric authentication options, both on-device and on-server,
to meet the real needs of business users,” continued
DePasquale.
About BIO-key International, Inc.
(www.bio-key.com)BIO-key is
revolutionizing authentication with biometric solutions that enable
convenient and secure access to information and high-stakes
transactions. We offer alternatives to passwords, PINs, tokens, and
cards to make it easy for enterprises and consumers to secure their
devices as well as information in the cloud. Our premium
fingerprint scanning devices offer market-leading quality,
performance and price.
BIO-key Safe Harbor
StatementAll statements contained in this press release
other than statements of historical facts are "forward-looking
statements" as defined in the Private Securities Litigation Reform
Act of 1995 (the "Act"). The words "estimate," "project,"
"intends," "expects," "anticipates," "believes" and similar
expressions are intended to identify forward-looking statements.
Such forward-looking statements are made based on management's
beliefs, as well as assumptions made by, and information currently
available to, management pursuant to the "safe-harbor" provisions
of the Act. These statements are not guarantees of future
performance or events and are subject to risks and uncertainties
that may cause actual results to differ materially from those
included within or implied by such forward-looking statements.
These risks and uncertainties include, without limitation, our
ability to develop new products and evolve existing ones, customer
and market acceptance of biometric solutions generally and our
specific offerings, our ability to expand sales within existing
customer relationships, our ability to raise additional capital,
and our ability to attract and retain key personnel. For a
more complete description of these and other risk factors that may
affect the future performance of BIO-key International, Inc., see
"Risk Factors" in the Company's Annual Report on Form 10-K for the
year ended December 31, 2018 and its other filings with the
Securities and Exchange Commission. Readers are cautioned not to
place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which
speak only as of the date made. The Company undertakes no
obligation to disclose any revision to these forward-looking
statements to reflect events or circumstances after the date
made.
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Investor & Media
ContactsWilliam Jones, David CollinsCatalyst
Global212-924-9800bkyi@catalyst-ir.com
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