Passkey Support Among New Features of Nok Nok’s Upgraded S3 Suite

Nok Nok Labs has launched the latest version of its flagship S3 Authentication Suite, delivering four new capabilities for the platform.

One of the new features is designed to help organizations adapt to the emergence of passkeys, an authentication innovation that essentially turns an end user’s smartphone into a passcode vault for their various online accounts, and locks it behind their device’s biometric sensors. The S3 Suite now enables organizations to configure authentication rules to detect when new devices are being used for passkey authentication and verify that the end user is the legitimate account holder.

The platform also now enables organizations running e-commerce sites to let their customers easily sign in with a passkey, helping to reduce friction and prevent cart abandonment.

Also of interest to online retailers will be a new payment verification mechanism that lets the customer confirm a transaction with their device’s biometric systems. Support for this W3C Secure Payment Confirmation (SPC) has been added to the EMVCo 3D Secure specification, which is widely used for online card-based payments.

Finally, the upgraded S3 Suite also features a system to let organizations track the physical security keys they have issued to their employees, enabling them to ensure that a given user is trying to log in with the key they were provided and not a third-party device. Nok Nok is positioning this capability as one that will be of particular interest to organizations in highly regulated industries such as healthcare and insurance.

“We co-founded the FIDO Alliance to make it easier to implement strong, passwordless authentication solutions for consumers and enterprises,” said Nok Nok CEO Phil Dunkelberger. “Now, we are expanding our offering to companies in key regulated sectors that need to be able to quickly and efficiently respond to the evolving regulations coming from the US and foreign governments.”

Beyond the commercial sector, Nok Nok has also indicated a growing interest in bringing its authentication and identity security solutions to the public sector. Toward the end of last year, the company established a strategic partnership with UberEther, a provider of identity and access management tools to the federal government, explaining at the time that it would deliver “innovative cybersecurity capabilities” to UberEther’s AIM Advantage platform.

–

April 13, 2023 – by Alex Perala