Nok Nok Labs, the Leader in FIDO-based Deployments, Experiences Record Momentum as Footprint Increases Worldwide

PALO ALTO, Calif., April 11, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Nok Nok Labs, the leader in next-generation authentication and a founder of the FIDO (Fast IDentity Online) Alliance, today announced a record year following broad industry acceptance of FIDO specifications as the industry standard to address the friction, vulnerabilities, and lack of ease of use that results from the use of passwords for authentication. Nok Nok Labs achieved a greater than 200% increase in billings in 2017, resulting from increased customer deployments, new channel partner and VAR strategic relationships, and market momentum fueled by the proliferation of mobile devices and global regulations that require strong authentication for online services.

"Nok Nok Labs has achieved significant milestones entering 2018 as strong demand for modern authentication solutions gain wider acceptance globally as a means to provide a frictionless and secure online experience," said Phillip Dunkelberger. "It's incredibly rewarding to have the world's largest and most successful banks, telcos, retailers, and healthcare providers seek our help to solve their user authentication challenges. With the proliferation of biometrics in mobile devices, our customers are seeing the tangible benefits of FIDO-based solutions to protect their users and accelerate their businesses."

Customer Deployments

North American, Asia-Pacific and European financial institutions, mobile network operators, ecommerce companies, and service providers must meet the requirements of their digital consumers that demand easy-to-use, safe and secure connections. Consumers also require a user experience that is frictionless, simple and fast. Enterprises need to address the user requirement for ease of use while at the same time mitigate phishing and other scalable attacks that are commonly caused by the use of passwords. Enterprises increasingly are testing and then deploying the FIDO-based biometric authentication solution from Nok Nok Labs – named the Nok Nok S3 Authentication Suite, to  deliver the benefits of both ease of use and security to their worldwide customers.  For example:

• Two of the three largest MNOs in Japan – who, collectively, serve over 100 million customers – have commercially deployed Nok Nok solutions to improve their customer's authentication experience.
• The largest financial institution in China, with $3.4 trillion in assets and over 500 million customers, uses the Nok Nok  platform to support its authentication requirements.
• Ericsson, the information and communication technology provider that carries approximately 40% of the world's mobile traffic, completed their first project with Nok Nok Labs in the Summer of 2017. "The roll out was flawless due to the close co-operation between Ericsson, Nok Nok Labs and the operator teams," said Rehan Siddiqui, Solutions Manager, Identity and Access Management at Ericsson. One of the top 3 mobile network operators in the United States is now using the S3 Suite to authenticate their more than 70 million subscribers.

Added Resellers and Integrators

During a record year for direct sales, Nok Nok Labs also closed multiple reseller partnerships.  As the need for next-generation, FIDO-based solutions continues to accelerate, Nok Nok Labs continues to be approached by multiple, global technology service providers looking for a way to integrate Nok Nok's industry-leading solution into their offerings.  

• "Nok Nok is the world-leader in FIDO-deployments and a powerful innovator in the authentication space," said Michihiko Ejiri, VP, Fujitsu Limited. The Fujitsu / Nok Nok Labs partnership has already born fruit with a major Japanese Bank deploying their joint offering to enable biometric authentication for their mobile applications.
• ThreatMetrix, recently acquired by Relx (parent company of LexisNexis) for $817M USD, partnered with Nok Nok Labs in 2017 in order to provide a combined offering. "By integrating [...] technologies from Nok Nok Labs into the ThreatMetrix platform, we are able to offer customers the industry's most comprehensive approaches to authenticate users securely and with minimal friction," said Alisdair Faulkner, Chief Product Officer at ThreatMetrix.

Addressing Global Regulations and Industry Standards

A growing number of global regulations and industry standards also fuel the momentum in Nok Nok Labs deployments, as industry and governments look to fix the vulnerabilities caused by the use of username/password based solutions and technologies.

• In the United States, the Secretary of the Treasury, Steve Mnuchin, emphasized the use of FIDO technology stating, "We've seen great innovations through public-private partnerships, like the emergence of FIDO Authentication."  Secretary Mnuchin's observation was further codified two months later when NIST released their Framework for Improving Critical Infrastructure and Cybersecurity and the Roadmap for achieving that Framework. Section 4.7 of the Roadmap identifies the benefit that the FIDO protocols bring and states that "Identity management needs to [be…] capable of supporting flexibility, modularity, and agility - while never sacrificing personal privacy," echoing the principles upon which Nok Nok Labs founded the FIDO Alliance.
• In Europe, two regulatory schemes are driving corporate action and require organizations to change the way they address user privacy. First, the broader scoped General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) focuses on Personally Identifiable Information (PII) and a general "right to be forgotten". Second, is the more focused Payment Services Directive 2 (PSD2) that focuses on strong customer authentication in banking.

When Nok Nok Labs first invented FIDO-based technology that would replace usernames and passwords, it was clear that privacy and security would need to be at the heart of the solution. As a result, FIDO specifications require that a user's biometric template is never allowed to leave their personal device.  This visionary requirement is a key benefit to those organizations looking to comply with GDPR.  Additionally, FIDO protocols rely on the same cryptographic signatures required by PSD2 – thereby establishing customer identity through multi-factor verification and linking payment and approval.  Therefore, financial institutions can use a FIDO-based authentication system to address compliance with the Strong Customer Authentication requirements of PSD2.

The momentum from 2017 continues to accelerate in 2018, as consumers require enterprises to provide them with authentication that is easy-to-use, safe and secure, with a user experience that is frictionless, simple, and fast. Financial institutions, banks, system integrators, enterprises, mobile network operators, and online service providers all recognize they need to transition from their password-based authentication solutions of the past, to lower cost modern authentication solutions, that bring the benefits of interoperability, meet industry standards and global regulations, and provide greater security and privacy. Nok Nok Labs' latest release of Nok Nok^TM S3 Authentication Suite (Nok Nok^TM S3 Suite), due in Q2 2018, is the most broadly deployed FIDO-based platform, delivering secure, phishing-resistant, privacy-conscious authentication, with a password-less user experience that works with any application, any platform, and any authenticator – biometric, token or wearable. 

About Nok Nok Labs 
Nok Nok Labs provides organizations with a next-generation authentication platform for cloud, mobile and IoT applications that enables a strategic approach to identity and authentication that is essential to modern business requirements.  The Nok Nok^TM S3 Authentication Suite enables organizations to accelerate revenues, reduce fraud, and strengthen security and privacy.  The S3 suite brings a unified platform for delivering easy-to-use, easy-to-deploy secure authentication infrastructure that supports and innovates beyond standards such as FIDO and other specifications. Nok Nok Labs is a founding member of the FIDO Alliance with industry leading customers and partners that include Fujitsu Limited, NTT DOCOMO, NTT Data, Ericsson, PayPal, Samsung and Lenovo.  For more information, visit www.noknok.com.

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