PortWise Demonstrates 40 Percent Savings Over Hardware Tokens

PortWise, the leading secure remote application access platform provider, today announced the availability of a total cost of ownership analysis showing it leads with a 40 percent savings over a typical hardware token implementation in sample 1,000-user and 7,500-user examples. The TCO analysis compares PortWise to strong authentication requiring hardware tokens from leading vendors such as RSA Security and Secure Computing.

Our TCO analysis is a bit controversial because it exposes some of the limitations of hardware tokens, said Jonathan Martin, chief marketing officer, PortWise. A lot of companies are spending their security budgets procuring and maintaining hardware tokens their users find cumbersome, or are prone to lose. For an increasingly mobile workforce, the cell phone enabled with text messaging offers a cost-effective alternative to proprietary tokens. In the case of the analysis, the 40 percent savings baseline grows further if you consider the hard costs of supporting a mobile workforce and leagues of partners needing secure access to applications in the enterprise.

According to the PortWise TCO analysis, a company with 1,000 users spends on average 40 percent more with hardware tokens than with the PortWise solution, which takes advantage of mobile phones and text messaging to provide a second factor of strong authentication.

PortWise helps ensure the protection of the information-driven enterprise, by allowing the right people secure access to the resources and applications they need, based on their user profile and authentication credentials. The PortWise Secure Application Access Platform supports all major browsers and mobile phone operating systems, with an optional client that can be managed from within standard directories such as Windows Active Directory, Novell eDirectory and Sun Java Directory Server, reducing end-user support overhead.