Crédit Agricole reinforces security of access to web services with GrIDsure

03 June 2010

The FNCA is the national body that represents the regional branches of Crédit Agricole, one of France’s leading retail banking groups. It was looking for a tool that would help improve ID authentication and security for the relevant authenticated executives and managers from the Crédit Agricole group, without adding to their administrative burden.

GrIDsure has announced that its unique authentication system has been chosen by the FNCA to provide a secure yet simple security solution for more than 3,000 senior employees across France. Crédit Agricole began integrating the GrIDsure solution 18 months ago after a strict selection procedure that began with an initial pilot study of 25 employees.

The GrIDsure solution has so far met with universal approval from Crédit Agricole by improving overall security without increasing complexity or inconvenience for the end-users. In addition, users have found that the randomised nature of the GrIDsure grid ensures that the solution is highly effective against shoulder-surfing attacks. This system is similarly resistant to attacks from malware designed to intercept the user’s keystrokes. Moreover, with a 4 cell PIP within a 5x5 grid offering more than 390,000 Personal Identification Pattern permutations (compared to only 10,000 PIN possibilities), GrIDsure is an ideal solution for securing Crédit Agricole’s client transactions.

Hervé Dupressoir, FNCA Telecom and IT Manager, commented: “We were looking for a solution that would offer unanimous improvement, both in terms of security and end-user acceptance. We originally made several attempts to move to tokens however they all ended in failure, because they were often lost or forgotten by users. It was therefore a great relief to discover GrIDsure and know that its unique proposition means that the end-user does not have to remember yet another PIN, code or password.

“The quantitative and qualitative benefits to be had from the deployment of GrIDsure have exceeded our expectations”, Hervé Dupressoir continues, “This system is quite simply fantastic; access is secure and users are enthusiastic”.

Stephen Howes, CEO, GrIDsure added: “Our solution is ideal for distributed organisations such as the FNCA where large numbers of users need secure yet convenient access from a variety of locations and devices. We are delighted that the first word-of-mouth feedback from the FNCA has been very positive: the authentication process is extremely simple, and it takes users very little time to understand the concept and learn the procedure in a fun way.”

GrIDsure’s security solution is based on a simple invention that allows users to authenticate themselves by remembering a pre-defined sequential pattern on a grid. Each time the user needs to authenticate their identity they are presented with a challenge grid with randomly generated numbers across it, and they authenticate themselves by entering the numbers that refer to their personal identification pattern (PIP).

It is easy to use because it has been proven that patterns are easier to remember than passwords; it is highly secure as there are numerous pattern possibilities that are almost impossible to shoulder surf, and it is very cost effective for companies as it requires no additional hardware.

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