Navigating the journey to passwordless authentication is an endeavor more and more organizations and IT administrators are going through today. Not that it’s always an easy journey. Going passwordless potentially puts data at risk. Axiad Cloud, an integrated and agile cloud identity management platform, offers a solution. It allows users to attain security and compliance while delivering a simplified user experience, reduced complexity, trusted public key infrastructure (PKI) and seamless integration. In their reviews on PeerSpot, members are discussing some of the many benefits of going passwordless with Axiad Cloud.

Axiad Use Cases

Dave P., an Enterprise Security Architect at a retailer, has been using Axiad Cloud to back a multifactor authentication project for several months. They are also using it for the PKI on smart cards, as well as YubiKey authentication. He said, “We’re still in the beginning stages of the rollout, but Axiad Cloud will make us more compliant and secure. We need to use it to comply with certain regulations.”

Multi-factor authentication through a VPN for employees and contingent workers is the main use case for an insurance company. They also use Axiad for local endpoint access, virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI), digital signatures or encryption, email encryption, and code signing and digital signatures for documents and email. According to Damon B., their Vice President, Chief Information Security Officer, “We use the solution for managing the cryptographic credentials for everyone on staff. Authentication is a process that the credentials are used for.”

For Eric B., a Cybersecurity Director – Enterprise Identity & Access Management at a software company, the platform is for PKI and multi-factor authentication through push notifications and one-time password (OTP) tokens. Eric B. reported that the added security has helped mitigate quite a few breach attempts since the system was implemented. He explained, “We are able to realize the effectiveness of our SOC [security operations center] using the platform. Through their analytics, we have found indicators of attempted compromise. The fact that they weren’t able to get in because multi-factor was enforced has been advantageous.”

A Speedy Solution

Damon B. likes that Axiad Cloud is a fast solution and shared a reason why. He said that typing in a user password sometimes takes someone 20 to 30 seconds, since the username has to be inputted and then the password is often long and cumbersome and likely rotates. But when a smart card is inserted, the user has a completely numeric PIN that is much easier to remember.

He elaborated, saying, “There is no way to get the PIN off the card. It doesn’t exist there. So, we don’t have to rotate PINs at all. It can be a lot weaker and just be numeric. Inserting your card and typing your PIN may take 10 seconds, and five if you’re fast. When we rolled this out, it was applauded by the users because it drastically reduced authentication time.”

Ease of Use

PeerSpot members discussed how Axiad Cloud reduces onboarding complexity and provides a streamlined user experience. Dave P. spoke to the solution’s ease of use, saying, “We’re issuing YubiKeys for our corporate users and they just plug it in, go to the Axiad Cloud portal and click the issue button. It’s a couple of steps.”

Damon B.’s organization has controls to ensure that the card is being issued to the right person. They go through several validation steps. He commented, “The number of steps is as minimal as it can be and as easy to use as you would hope it would be.” And when it comes to the user activating their credential, he added that generating the certificates for the user is incredibly easy. “Overall, it’s intuitive and simple,” he said.

“I have had very few calls to the service desk regarding enrollment. It takes a couple of minutes to enroll a user,” said Eric B, remarking on the benefits of Axiad’s One Click Issuance. He also mentioned that deploying and managing authenticators is very easy, either done by a mobile application or enrollment of an OTP token. As he put it, “It is very simple. This is important to my userbase, which makes it important to me.”

Top-notch Implementation Team

Dave P. uses Axiad’s service and customer care for deployment, which has been a positive experience. “That was one of my favorite parts,” he shared. “We had a guy named Doug who was our contact for the rollout and we were on calls with him and emailed with him every day. He’s been really awesome.”

Implementation was similarly seamless for Damon B., who said, “There are a lot of design parameters to consider when looking at certificates and they were very thorough in outlining the pros and cons of each one. They helped us step through things and made recommendations to try to simplify it. They provided recommendations on configuration features for the endpoints themselves.”

Eric B. was equally impressed with Axiad’s team, saying, “They were fantastic. They know the regulations just as well as we do. When you are speaking the same language, it just makes everything that much easier.”

Passwordless Authentication

Axiad Cloud helps enable passwordless authentication for everyone in Dave P.’s organization, in every use case, including workstation logon, VPN, and cloud applications, which is a big driver for what his team is doing. “Our associates are very happy not to need their password for most situations anymore,” he said.

Although Eric B.’s team hasn’t fully deployed a passwordless platform, he said for external access, Axiad Cloud does help enable passwordless authentication quite well for everyone and every use case. He observed, “It is very well-received by our users. This is important for us because that is what we are moving toward.”

The passwordless future is coming, challenges aside. Axiad is helping make the journey successful for organizations that embrace the platform. Axiad offers a fast, easy-to-use solution for passwordless authentication. As PeerSpot members shared, they are putting Axiad to work across many different use cases.