“Operation Emmental” – as in swiss cheese – is a variation om a man-in-the-middle attack, that found a way around two-factor authentication tokens that are sent as text messages for users to activate banking sessions.

Ping Identity launched new products and updates that are aimed at deprecating the use of passwords for authentication. The company is launching PingID, a security solution for one-swipe mobile authentication. The launch also features upgrades to the company’s PingFederate, PingAccess and PingOne product lines.

HID Global tapped for multi-factor authentication project in Poland; the latest government smart card predictions; Cross Match available via UK’s G-Cloud CloudStore; SeureKey and Oberthur Technologies partner on mobile identity initiative and Gemalto supporting African health project.

Facebook engineer’s aren’t a fan of passwords. The social media site is reportedly looking at adding token for access to the site instead of the often criticized password.

Once thought to be overkill for all but the most sensitive data, mainstream enterprises and users are now picking up one-time password technology at a escalating pace. Faced with ever-growing threats from hackers and malware, hardware OTP tokens and keyfobs as well as software-based equivalents in the form of mobile apps, SMS or other out-of-band authentication techniques are commonplace.

Toopher is touting invisible authentication but also may have one of the coolest tag lines for an identity company out there: “cool enough for James Bond and your mom can use it too.” Once an enterprise enables a site for Toopher, a user’s mobile device can serve as a second factor of authentication.

Organizations can easily add security to their login procedures with two-factor authentication, which is a simple process that requires users to enter more than one piece of information to access accounts. For example, in addition to simply entering a user name and password, two-factor authentication requires use of another identifier, such as a smart card or a PIN code.

Red Hat selected Gemalto Protiva tokens to enable remote access for the company’s more than 6,000 employees. The new authentication system integrates with Red Hat’s authentication technology for employees connecting to the company’s virtual private network and SAML-enabled applications.

The Heartbleed bug caught everybody by surprise. Password breaches are almost common but the SSL vulnerability on major web sites has consumer scrambling to reset passwords. SecureKey’s Andre Boysen talks to Regarding ID’s Gina Jordan about the bug, it’s impact and how it may lead to multi-factor authentication.

The number one way hackers are gaining access to information on computer networks continues to be the misuse of usernames and passwords, according to the 2014 Data Breach Investigation Report from Verizon. Two out of three breaches exploit weak or stolen passwords, making a case for strong two-factor authentication.