BioConnect Explains Duo Integration’s Strong, Simple Access Control

“As BioConnect CEO Rob Douglas explained in a show floor interview at ISC West, the aim is to unify digital and physical access security, so that a user only needs to authenticate through a single platform for both.”

In the wake of its big announcement about partnering with Duo, BioConnect is now spelling out exactly what the collaboration means through a new blog post.

Duo’s eponymous mobile app is designed to turn a user’s smartphone into a second factor authentication device. As integrated with BioConnect’s multi-factor biometric authentication platform, Duo enables stepped-up authentication at any access point in the enterprise.

It’s a hi-tech security process, but in practice it’s actually convenient and straightforward. When an employee taps their ID card against a contactless reader to gain door access, it prompts the Duo app to ask for additional authentication — this time with the tap of a finger. With that, the door is unlocked.

It’s a simple approach, but one that combines two different pieces of hardware — an ID card and a smartphone — along with the biometric security that is so often used to secure access to the latter.

BioConnect first announced the integration of the two platforms at the end of March, and last week revealed that Duo is just one of multiple big-name tech companies participating in its newly-launched BioConnect Partner Program, with others including IBM, Genetec, and Suprema. As BioConnect CEO Rob Douglas explained in a show floor interview at ISC West, the aim is to unify digital and physical access security, so that a user only needs to authenticate through a single platform for both.

It’s a theme that came up again during FindBiometrics’ ISC West discussion, “How Biometrics are Enabling the Convergence of Physical and Information Security“, in which Douglas was an expert panelist; and Douglas will be sure to elaborate on it further in next week’s FindBiometrics webinar, “Enterprise Biometrics in the Era of the Data Breach“, where he will be joined by executives from IDEMIA and ISC West. The presentation will begin at 11am Eastern on Wednesday, April 24th, and registration is open now.

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April 15, 2019 – by Alex Perala