Partner Integration Series: How to Secure User Login With Access Management and NoPassword
In a recent post, I introduced the ForgeRock Intelligent Authentication strategy - Authentication Trees, authentication nodes and important features in making the ForgeRock Identity Platform so flexible for customers and partners. I also described the Authentication Trees we’ve developed with some of our ForgeRock Technology Partners. Here, I’ll show you how you can easily use an Authentication Tree from our technology partner NoPassword, to improve or even replace password authentication in your applications.
The Thing About Passwords . . . (And Authentication In General)
Many people don’t like using passwords because they already have too many accounts to keep track of. By “many people” I mean IT administrators, security teams, employees, customers and users.
And Bam Azizi, the CTO of NoPassword.
Azizi knows that most cyberattacks are aimed at passwords. That’s why NoPassword uses local biometrics — face, fingerprint, voice, iris scan — and frictionless multi-factor authentication through the user’s mobile device. Companies implement NoPassword to grant access to their applications, devices, network, and data without making their users remember passwords, carry a token or enter a second-factor code from their phone.
That makes life easier for users, but what about for developers? What about for IT?
Authentication Trees: Future-Proofing Security and Avoiding Lock-In
“Authentication technology changes quickly,” says Azizi. “IT managers and developers want to avoid vendor lock-in, which can happen with almost any technology they choose. And at NoPassword we want to avoid technology lock-in. We want to make it easy for our customers to change from our current authentication methods to the improved ones we release in the future.”
NoPassword worked with our ForgeRock Technology Partner Program and together, we created a NoPassword Authentication Node. These nodes allows ForgeRock customers to integrate their Access Management instance to NoPassword authentication services.
“ForgeRock helped us create two custom nodes,” says Azizi. “With the NoPassword nodes and the flexibility of Authentication Trees on the ForgeRock Platform, our customers can easily build their own passwordless authentication journeys.”
Following is an example of an Authentication Tree built around NoPassword. Each node in the Tree corresponds to an individual task in the authentication process, like collecting the username from the application the user wants to access, initiating the NoPassword service and evaluating the response NoPassword receives from the user’s mobile device.
The result is that companies using NoPassword for secure access to their applications are not locked in to an authentication method. If they decide to switch to or add a different method six months later, they simply go into Access Management and rebuild their Authentication Tree around different NoPassword modalities. Their developers don’t need to rewrite login screens or use different interfaces for their applications.
Best of all, users get a frictionless authentication experience to the application so they can access data, make purchases or get their work done.
Your Turn: Become A ForgeRock Technology Partner
Why should you become a ForgeRock Technology Partner? The technical reason is that our flexible Authentication Trees make it easy for you to package your technology in nodes. The business reason is that ForgeRock works with you to develop your nodes, then we make them available to our customers through our Identity Platform and Marketplace — the way we’ve done with NoPassword.
Want to see how easily you can build your technology into nodes for ForgeRock Access Management and simplify the authentication experience? First, have a look through our Marketplace Catalog, where you’ll find dozens of integrations. Then, look through the NoPassword Authentication Node project to see how easy it is to install your node to Access Management for simple, secure login to applications.
Stay tuned for more posts in this series. The more you know about the ForgeRock Technology Partner program, the better it looks.
