BIO-key Blog

After attending the NACo Annual Conference this year and having the pleasure of speaking with hundreds of county elected officials and their IT teams, it was clear that the topic of cybersecurity was top of mind for everyone. The recent headlines about cyberattacks, especially ransomware on major organizations including Tyler Technologies, Solarwinds, the Colonial Pipeline, JBS, and Kaseya...

The Multi-factor Authentication (MFA) requirement for Salesforce is meant to add a layer of security and increase protection against unauthorized account access. Starting February 1st, 2022, Salesforce will require customers and users to utilize MFA to access Salesforce products. Customers do have the option to use an MFA solution provided by Salesforce or use a supported third-party MFA...

In today’s day and age, your organization is likely facing new cyberthreats, pushed to working remotely due to the COVID-19 pandemic, wanting to safeguard more sensitive files throughout the organization, or a mix of all the situations. IT administrators and managers have the difficult task of changing the cyber infrastructure to solve all these issues without heavily frustrating their users.

At BIO-key, a lot has happened this year. With new product launches, insightful blogs, and sharing lots and lots of cybersecurity news, we’ve published more than 50 press releases, webinars, blogs, and eBooks in 2021.

Banks and financial services have to constantly navigate through a rocky road, especially now more than ever as the novel coronavirus has transitioned many employees to work from home. While banks and financial services remain competitive by providing a digital customer experience, they have to secure their work environment due to federal financial service regulations posed on the industry.Due...

As we near 2022 and the holiday season, you as a CISO and your users have dealt with a lot in 2021. Your users are beginning to wrap up their projects and unwind from the year but your job as a CISO is never done. In the spirit of the holidays, here are a few holiday items you might be wishing you get from your users.

Today, the term Zero Trust is now used frequently amongst IT professionals. While Zero Trust may appear to some to be another cyber buzzword, enterprises are actively working to understand what it means to have a Zero Trust architecture, and how to implement it. In the latest Osterman Research whitepaper, "Why Zero Trust is Important", two out of three organizations surveyed expect to achieve...

When we attended the EDUCAUSE Conference several weeks ago in Philadelphia, we learned about major changes and expectations from IT professionals in the education sector. Top IT issues included being cyber-everywhere, modernizing systems, and the move to the cloud. For 2022 and beyond, institutions are looking at new technologies and solving new challenges, which we've included below in our...

As the year ends, many of your employees, users, and customers are beginning to wind down and celebrate the upcoming holiday season. For the United States, the next holiday season is Thanksgiving, a celebration full of food and family gathering. However, the most iconic part of Thanksgiving is the stereotypical food that many families serve throughout the dinner: turkey, mashed potatoes,...

Multi-factor authentication has become a must-have for any cybersecurity strategy, yet getting customers, employees, and suppliers to use it has been a challenge. There is always that group of users or even CEO who does not want to use the authentication method IT administrators provide. But successful MFA relies on successful adoption.

IT directors and managers are now “change managers”,...

When the COVID-19 pandemic created a large shutdown worldwide around March of 2020, many organizations had to suddenly change their workforce model to support remote working; BIO-key included. Daily coffee chit-chats, quick meetings, and in-person conversations were pushed to Slack, Zoom, and other online video meeting services and asynchronous communication methods. 

With the coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19), there has been a 238% surge in cyberattacks against banks and financial institutions. Throughout the year, many financial services organizations have been exposed due to a poor cybersecurity infrastructure, and as many cybercriminals are getting more innovative in their cyberattack methods (cloud hijacking, AI machine manipulation, etc.), the financial...

As we have learned throughout Cybersecurity Awareness Month, the topic of cybersecurity was top of mind for everyone. The headlines throughout the year about cyberattacks especially ransomware on major organizations including Tyler Technologies, SolarWinds, Colonial Pipeline, JBS, and Kaseya heightened awareness around the possibility of an attack happening to anyone.

While removing passwords is the goal for IT leaders and security experts, as Microsoft recently announced, the replacements for...

October is Cybersecurity Awareness Month, a global effort to help everyone stay safe and protected when using technology whenever and however you connect. The theme for the month is ‘Do Your Part, #BeCyberSmart’. The goal of this focused month-long campaign is to support online safety and educate employees, customers, and users about digital privacy. Today, BIO-key is excited to announce its...

Cloud computing is a popular topic of discussion in the current digital landscape. When the COVID-19 pandemic first landed, organizations in all verticals – from small businesses to Higher Education and Fortune 500 companies – were struck hard and fast with a new requirement: a remote and/or mobile workforce.

With PortalGuard, we offer both the ability have the users reset their password on their own. If you’d like to also configure the ability for the users to see their password instead of resetting it, that is available too. From the PortalGuard Admin Guide, which can be found here:

As we continue to see an overwhelming number of cyberattacks, it has become apparent that many organizations are underprepared for these threats. Security breaches are in the news on an almost daily basis, which makes it clear that many organizations need a stronger way to secure their data.Identity-Bound Biometrics (IBB) can provide an ideal solution for enterprises looking to combat...

Ambulances being re-routed. Postponed radiation treatments for cancer patients. Patient deaths resulting from delayed emergency treatment. 

In many ways, the upcoming summer signifies a huge step forward for everyone. We are halfway out of the dark side of a global pandemic, and each one of us has honed skills both new and old. Many individuals have taken this dark time and made it even darker by attacking those who are already struggling to find a sense of normalcy. Balancing the physical world and the digital one is no longer a...

As a tech nerd, few things pique my interest like the cutting edge. As the architect behind the IDaaS cloud infrastructure at BIO-key, I’ve had the pleasure and rare opportunity to build a system from the ground up that utilizes the latest design philosophies and toolsets available to the industry. What are these tools and what makes them different? Cloud Computing as a paradigm can have its...

The traditional method of authenticating to a network or endpoint uses a single factor – a combination of a username and password that the user enters to gain access. That approach is fraught with security problems, including the fact that users will generally use simple passwords that are easy for them to remember (and easy for bad actors to guess or determine through brute force techniques),...

Josef Stalin is supposed to have once said, “I trust no one, not even myself”. While murderous dictators are normally not reliable sources of useful information, this quote properly summarizes the essence of the Zero Trust architecture, which the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) defines as:

“The term for an evolving set of cybersecurity paradigms that move defenses from...

Moving Away from Passwords

The use of passwords – the traditional method for employees and customers to access networks, applications, data sources and other elements of the IT infrastructure – is the most common method of authentication. They have the advantage of being easy to implement, they are cost-effective, they can be entered from virtually any device with a keyboard, and they offer...

Another day, another data breach. As we have experienced, organizations being a victim of data breaches are no longer a matter of "if" but "when". Day after day, more and more organizations are falling victim to cyberattacks, like the recent 2021 attacks on the Colonial Pipeline which affected gas stations all throughout the East Coast into Texas and the JBS Meat Factory cyberattack. These...