Secure remote access technology proved its worth last week with offices all over the country forced to close because staff couldn’t make it in or they had children off school. This is according to Signify which provides a secure hosted authentication service and reported a peak 117pc increase in remote log ins to corporate IT systems over the previous week, when snow disruption was at its worst.
With The Times reporting that Monday’s snow alone cost £3 billion in lost productivity for companies already struggling through the recession; those businesses with a secure remote working policy in place were able to remain largely unaffected.
"With emergency services asking people not to travel unless absolutely necessary and schools shutting all over the country, many people only got into work one or two days last week," said Dave Abraham, CEO of Signify. "It is clear from our statistics that those companies using our secure authentication service made full use of it to remain productive from home and avoid putting employees under pressure to struggle in through dangerous conditions, while also ensuring that corporate information was not compromised. And the beauty of using a hosted service is that there is no up front investment, so secure remote access is affordable for any size of organisation."
Grinding halt
Every three to six months there are national or regional disasters that can prevent people from going to work, the firm adds, from the annual bout of the Noro virus to regular floods, train and tube strikes, terrorist threats and bomb scares.
"While many organisations already provide secure remote access for senior executives and ‘road-warriors’, the ability to authenticate more staff for short term secure remote access to essential email, files and applications, minimises the stresses and business losses created by these short term emergencies. With our fully-hosted service new, or infrequent users that may have forgotten their log-in details, were able to help themselves and request a new PIN or get immediate guidance from our helpdesk. We saw significant numbers of new users logging in during the snow" said Abraham.
Signify’s fully hosted 24/7 two-factor authentication service means regular users can be given an RSA SecurID token that produces a new one-time passcode (OTP) every 60 seconds, while users who will only log in occasionally – including during an emergency, for example – can opt for the lower cost Passcode OnDemand service that turns their mobile phone or PDA into their authentication device.
A hosted service provider
Signify clients include London Borough of Southwark, Vopak, Lovells, Eversheds, Kier Group, Norwich and Peterborough Building Society, and Serco.
Headquartered in Cambridge, UK, Signify provides Secure Authentication Services to corporate and public sector customers to provide access to sensitive information and systems. Two-factor authentication includes tokens, mobile phones and PDAs. For more information visit –
