Entrust Selected by SCHUFA to Secure New Credit Reporting Web Portal Business
Entrust IdentityGuard provides strong mutual authentication with breakthrough economics, ease of use and scalability for 62 million potential users
16 Nov 2005
MUNICH and DALLAS – Entrust, Inc. [NASDAQ: ENTU], a world leader in securing digital identities and information, today announced that SCHUFA, for the first time ever, will be providing access to personal credit information via their new user portal. Entrust IdentityGuard will be used to provide strong authentication for online use helping to prevent unauthorized persons from gaining access to restricted data.
SCHUFA is responsible for the accuracy of more than 362 million pieces of data from 62 million individuals. With the new secure website, SCHUFA plans to offer quick and easy online access to consumer credit information by authorized individuals. With the launch of SCHUFA Online, consumers will now be able to access their personal credit information in a secure, reliable and flexible manner.
Entrust IdentityGuard is an innovative, strong authentication solution which requires no additional hardware or software for the end user. The solution is easy to use and cost effective compared with more expensive hardware tokens. In addition, Entrust IdentityGuard offers numerous security advantages over other various European online security alternatives.
Individuals wishing to use SCHUFA Online must first register through the local post office. This procedure will allow an individual to receive a gridcard with a unique grid from SCHUFA. In order to gain access to the restricted information, the user will be prompted to provide a username along with certain grid coordinates from their Entrust IdentityGuard card. Each card has unique letters and numbers represented within a grid, and each login request is valid only for that specific session.
Entrust IdentityGuard is flexible, easy to use, and provides a range of authentication options that organizations can use to help reduce fraud more cost effectively while still fitting seamlessly into the user experience. This flexibility can help allow an organization to adapt the level of security to the nature of the transaction, the sensitivity of the data and the individual user requirements.
In the initial pilot phase of the new SCHUFA customer portal, SCHUFA Online will offer secure online access to citizens from Bonn and the Rhine-Sieg-Kreis. “We would like to make SCHUFA more customer friendly,” said Rainer Neumann, Chairman of the Board for SCHUFA. “Therefore, all citizens will now be able to simply query their information online. The security of the data is naturally one of our most important concerns, as is providing easy access to our information. Entrust IdentityGuard offers the ideal combination of security and services with added ease of use.”
“SHUFA’s new credit reporting Web portal business required a breakthrough approach to consumer security,” said Hans Ydema, Managing Director of EMEA at Entrust. “Entrust IdentityGuard provides them a secure, cost effective and easy to use solution allowing them to bring their web enabled offering to all their constituents.”
About SCHUFA Holding AG
SCHUFA Holding AG, is an innovative credit service provider, enabling and accelerating credit reporting. SCHUFA’s partners such as banks, savings institutions, brokerage houses and related industries, use SCHUFA, which allows consumers an easy and economical means for credit services. In 2004, SCHUFA realized 70 million Euros in revenue and employed 701 workers.
This press release contains forward-looking statements relating to the use of Entrust IdentityGuard in the pilot phase of a project to provide SCHUFA customers with online access to their consumer credit information, the potential total size of the addressable SCHUFA customer base, the expected benefit of working with SCHUFA, and such statements involve a number of risks and uncertainties. Among the important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those indicated by such forward-looking statements are delays in product development, coordination of efforts between Entrust and SCHUFA, lack of funding for expansion of online initiatives, undetected software errors or bugs, competitive pressures, market acceptance of technologies of Entrust, technical difficulties, changes in customer requirements, government and industry regulations, general economic conditions and the risk factors detailed from time to time in Entrust's periodic reports and registration statements filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including without limitation Entrust's Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for the quarter ended September 30, 2005. Entrust cautions investors that it might not update any or all of the foregoing forward-looking statement.