Press Release
May 2nd, 2012InCommon Selects Duo Security to Provide Two-Factor Authentication for Federation Manager
The U.S. research and education identity federation substantially increases account security
Ann Arbor, Mich. — May 2, 2012 — InCommon has introduced two-factor authentication to protect its Federation Manager, the application site administrators use to update their organization's metadata. This data is critical to establishing the trust backbone of the InCommon Federation, which allows millions of students and faculty to access services provided by nearly 300 universities, research organizations, and their sponsored partners.
Although InCommon's current login system requires the use of strong passwords, adding two-factor authentication will substantially increase account security of the Federation Manager. InCommon chose Duo Security's two-factor authentication technology because it leverages mobile phones, devices almost all users already have. To authenticate, a user first types a password and then confirms the login attempt with the Duo Mobile smartphone app. After confirming the login attempt, the user is authenticated. Duo also supports second-factor delivery via text message, phone call, and one-time password tokens.
InCommon will provide its community with details about the move to two-factor authentication and the selection of Duo Security's cloud service. The deployment of two-factor has already begun and is expected to continue throughout the summer.
About Duo Security
Duo Security makes two-factor authentication radically easy to deploy, use, and manage. Duo empowers any web, IT, or network administrator to easily protect accounts by leveraging their users' mobile phones for secondary authentication. Every day, over 500 organizations with users in over 80 countries rely on Duo to secure their logins and transactions. Learn more at duosecurity.com.
About InCommon
InCommon®, operated by Internet2, serves the U.S. education and research communities, supporting a common framework of trust services and operating the InCommon Federation, the U.S. trust federation for research and education, and the community-driven InCommon Certificate Service. The InCommon Federation enables scalable, trusted collaborations among its community of participants. For more information, visit www.incommon.org.