The SafeNet Authentication Service is overall a great product. We particularly found its functionality, set up and documentation to be strong. The principal deductions were for the wait time with support and its value for money rating.
After receiving the documentation, the product took around five minutes to set up and it was fairly easy to manage, especially considering that the majority of the tool is hosted on the SafeNet cloud. The documentation included a series of PDF manuals and integration guides. The steps were clear, concise and even included examples of configuration settings through screen shots. It walked us through the full setup process and how to integrate the tool into our environment. The only thing we had to do for setup was install the required agent.
We made a call to support to ask a number of questions about the setup and the company's support service. SafeNet offers two types of support. The basic, included in the base price, gives users 24/7 access to the SafeNet knowledge base and online and telephone aid coverage during business hours with an eight-hour response time. The plus package costs an additional 25 percent of subscription and includes everything from the base option, as well as 24/7/365 online and telephone support coverage with one-hour response. The base cost of the product is $1.30 per user per month for a 2,500 token configuration. The price includes user subscription, soft OTP token, hardware OTP token, support and a lifetime replacement of hardware tokens. There are special prices based on volumes and tiers. Users can also have more than one token.
The service itself is a cloud-based authentication service that enables enterprises to secure online assets. It generates a 4- to 16-character pin, which is unique to the user for authentication. To test the product we accessed every feature that the token had to offer: the basic token generation feature, the changing of an individual's pin, and challenging the pin. Each feature passed easily.
The product has built-in token management policies which free IT administrators from the tedious task of issuing tokens, monitoring expiration dates and reconciling accounts. SafeNet Authentication Service is hosted in high availability, tier 4 data centers conforming to the latest standards. And, it uses a hardware security module (HSM) to protect customer data and token seed records from tampering or exposure. Managers can even easily configure and manage the tokens by logging into the web-based management interface, known as BlackShield Cloud Manager. The interface is simple to use and navigate.
The service is customizable, even allowing for a multilingual self-service site that allows users to request a token and perform other self-service tasks. It offers alternative login methods for lost tokens (email password or SMS password), and allows for integration into workflows through self-registration, management sign off and by wrapping into logistic services. The aspect of this function, which really packs a punch, is that it can integrate with existing tokens to provide seamless deployment for users who may already have tokens in use.
Rebecca Weaver contributed to this review.
