General Challenge
In many companies, the Internet is increasingly becoming a part of the corporate network. The electronic collaboration with customers and suppliers, the flexibility of jobs and processes, the required significant cost savings and improvements in productivity create special challenges to today's businesses.
Because of the many different ways to access data and applications in an enterprise, the demands on the network security increase enormously on a daily basis. Trojans, viruses, malware, hacking or phishing add additional threats to the security of corporate data.
he challenge is to find a future-proof, flexible and cost effective solution. In addition you need to take into account that ultimately security also depends on the acceptance by the users. Therefore an optimal solution must be of simple and intuitive use for the user.
Access Control
To control that only authorized users have access to your data is a key aspect of security. Since many attacks by Trojans, phishing, etc. are geared specifically to the access data, the control of these sensitive data is one of the greatest challenges facing the companies.
- 2-factor authentication
The ECOS solutions provide a highly secure 2-factor authentication based on the principle "knowledge and ownership". This ensures that access data cannot be easily intercepted by electronic means and abused. The ECOS 2-factor authentication requires not only the knowledge of the password but also the possession of an ECOS USB stick. Electronic as well as social attack scenarios therefore aren’t going anywhere, since they consider only one factor. - Access to applications
In addition, the ECOS solution can be combined with other solutions, so that existing user rights and access permissions are inherited. - Increased security with integrated smartcard
The security level can be further increased by using the variant with integrated smartcard. This way the access key is securely stored in the hardware of the smartcard.
Protecting the Terminals
Due primarily to Trojans and other threats, it is only possible with considerable effort to ensure the security of every PC.
The ECOS-solutions offer a variety of mechanisms to increase dramatically the security in this area as well.
- The terminal will not be fully integrated into the network; the access will be limited to used applications. This can prevent that an attack on the corporate network is possible via the used terminal.
- To ensure that the connection set up with ECOS solutions cannot be used by malicious software, running unknown applications is not possible.
- The terminal does not store data, and therefore no data remain on untrustworthy devices (e.g.in the internet cafe or at the hotel computer). A "clean up" of the device after use is not needed, as it would with a traditional VPN connection.
- It is also possible to boot the computer completely via the ECOS USB stick. This by-passes malware possibly existing on a computer and provides a highly secure access to the corporate network.
Data Privacy
The ECOS solutions pay specific attention to the security of the data. The ECOS management mechanisms can centrally determine which data an employee may have available on an external computer.
So you can for instance allow certain employees to store data on external media and block others, and allow the use of external devices (e.g. digital cameras or video cameras) and printers when needed.
To further protect the data, special encryption mechanisms are used to communicate between the terminal and the corporate network.
User Friendliness
Because security is also a question of user acceptance, the ECOS solutions combine all security features with a high comfort of use. The user no longer has to manage numerous access data and passwords. He only needs his ECOS USB stick and one password.
The user does not install software on the used computer. All necessary components are already on the ECOS USB stick. The ECOS USB stick can also be used immediately by users without any computer knowledge.
