IDA Sets Up Subsidiary to Facilitate More Secure Online Transactions

The Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore (IDA) today announced that it has set up a wholly-owned subsidiary, Assurity Trusted Solutions Pte Ltd (Assurity), to be the National Authentication Framework (NAF) operator for Second Factor Authentication (2FA). Assurity will own the NAF infrastructure and offer NAF 2FA services to Service Providers (SPs) and consumers at a national level. Assurity is expected to start rolling out its service to Service Providers in the second half of 2011. ST Electronics (Info-Security) has been appointed to design, build, operate and maintain the NAF infrastructure for Assurity.

An NAF Advisory Council, comprising senior representatives from Ministry of Information, Communication and the Arts (MICA), Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA), Ministry of Finance (MOF), Ministry of Health (MOH), and Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), has also been set up to provide strategic guidance for Assurity to align itself with the strong authentication developments across sectors.
With the increased availability of online services offered by key sectors such as banking & finance, Government and healthcare, NAF can safeguard against unauthorised access to sensitive information, such as bank account or electronic health records. A system is said to use strong authentication when it requires at least two factors before access to the system is granted. This contrasts with traditional single-factor authentication which requires only one authentication factor, usually the knowledge of a password, in order to gain access to a system.

A popular second-factor authentication method that many banks are offering to their online consumers today is One-Time Password or OTP. When a user accesses an online service, in addition to User-ID and Password, the user would be required to enter an additional "second factor password", which is generated on demand. The dynamically-generated "second factor password" could be delivered through a token (hardware or software) or via SMS.

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