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I was talking with a potential customer in the past days about the plusses (differentiators) of StoneGate SSL VPN technology versus other competitors.

Soon I realized that, beside the common wish of having a good clientless mobile to site encrypted communication channel, there is high interest in two “shining” features of StoneGate SSL VPN: the Application Portal logic and, above all, the various authentication methods (over 15) included and supported.

And about authentication, we had a nice discussion about how the beauty of hardware based OTP tokens turns rapidly into a nightmare for system administrators, because such devices are maybe the “most forgotten on the shelf at home ”

Consequently, re-serialization, replacing units, temp OTP codes etc. are tremendously impacting on the so-called TCA (Total Cost of Administration), beside representing a rather high cost factor in purchase and maintenance as well.

That particular customer was also checking if we do support a specific well known RADIUS-based vendor of such hardware tokens, and the answer was positive.

But then I started talking about the possibility of bundling strong and very strong authentication with a tool that everybody has and that is uncommon to forget at home: the mobile phone!

“StoneGate SSL VPN”, I began, “includes unlimited licenses of MobileID software tokens that you can install on various platforms such as Windows, Mac and Linux Desktop, Symbian Smartphones, Blackberry and others. This is a small application usable to generate OTP, compatible with StoneGate Synchronized and StoneGate Challenge RADIUS-based  strong authentication methods…”

Suddendly, I heard a different tone in his voice… something hard to be explained in words… a feeling that we were set on same wave

From that moment on, the conversation evolved to talk about the technology like a solution, like his solution: a dynamically populated corporate application portal featuring strong authentication and multiple criteria validation of the connecting user… something I’m sure this customer will implement very soon

Network Security. Simplified!

written by RoarinPenguin - 3,000 views \\ tags: application portal, authentication, MobileID, SSL VPN, story