First National Bank of South Africa goes two-factor with Vanguard

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.