EMC Corp. said Monday it has acquired Verid Inc., a Sunrise,
Fla.-based security vendor specializing in identity management and
authentication technology.
 | | | | | This helps RSA with consumer
authentication techniques but eventually this could find its way
into the enterprise.
Mark Diodati,
analystBurton Group |
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Hopkinton, Mass.-based EMC said Verid has clients that include
large financial institutions, telecom providers and retailers.The
acquisition is complete and the cost of the transaction is not
being disclosed, EMC said in a statement.
Verid will function as a separate product line and services
offering within RSA for at least the remainder of 2007, but the
vendor said it plans to wrap Verid's technology into the RSA
Adaptive Authentication suite.
EMC acquired Bedford, Mass.-based RSA Security Inc. last year.
RSA, which sells encryption software has operated as part of EMC's
security division.
The RSA authentication "suite will now cover the identity
verification process from end-to-end, through a new two-tier
approach," the vendor said in a statement.
The acquisition will bolster RSA in the
consumer authentication market, where banks and other financial
firms are trying to validate users in a process called identity
proofing, said Mark Diodati, an analyst with Midvale, Utah-based
Burton Group. RSA competes with Mountain View, Calif.-based
VeriSign and Addison, Texas based Entrust in the consumer
authentication market.
"Financial institutions use this technology to determine who
that person is before they reset a password or issue a token,"
Diodati said. "For now this helps RSA with consumer authentication
techniques but eventually this could find its way into the
enterprise."
RSA said its new approach includes initial authentication and
ongoing authentication. The initial state determines the level of
trust that can be applied to an identity. Subsequent authentication
activities can be managed using levels of security based on a
company's level risk.
"The acquisition of Verid both builds upon our existing set of
authentication methods and -- significantly -- extends our
capabilities into the preliminary vetting and verification stages
of new user relationships in a variety of markets," said
Christopher Young, vice president, consumer and access solutions at
RSA, in a statement.
Young said the acquisition also increases the level of analytics
in the RSA suite. EMC plans to combine RSA's Risk Analytics and
Verid's Question Intelligence Analytics. The technology allows
users to adjust a questions level of difficulty in real-time during
the knowledge-based authentication process, according to the risk
of each specific activity.
Verid CEO Kevin Watson will continue to lead the business,
reporting directly to RSA's Christopher Young.