Toopher Security Deployed for 24,000 Faculty and Staff at University of Texas at Austin
Austin, tX (PRWEB) August 19, 2014 -- Toopher, the invisible online security company, is pleased today to announce that its technology has been deployed by University of Texas at Austin to secure its 24,000 faculty and staff. With Universities more frequently targets of malice, UT is taking a proactive approach to protecting its employees’ sensitive payroll data with the Toopher two-factor authentication platform. UT is reviewing an expanded roll out to all UT students as well. Toopher went live for faculty and staff in early July.
Toopher’s online security solution is its patented “Invisible Authentication,” a location-based multifactor authentication solution designed around user behavior and powered by your phone's location awareness. The technology was created at the University of Texas of Austin, and the company was founded in 2011 by a UT PhD candidate in pervasive computing and a UT adjunct professor. Toopher was a portfolio company of UT’s Austin Technology Incubator (ATI) and was chosen to represent all recent graduates at ATI’s 25th anniversary event in January 2014.
“Securing university employees in a manner that is thorough, but also simple, and non-intrusive to them was paramount to us, especially as more and more higher education institutions are targeted,” said Cam Beasley, Chief Information and Security Officer at University of Texas at Austin. “That we could accomplish our goals with an authentication solution that was built right here on campus was fantastic.”
Higher education institutions are frequently under attack by hackers targeting University employees to misappropriate credentials as well as funds. Now, with Toopher, UT’s 24,000 faculty and staff have additional protection for their personal and financial information, authenticating payroll data, direct deposits, access to W2s, changes in direct deposit directives or bank accounts, etc.
UT employees simply download the free Toopher app and pair their phone with the service at no cost and the next time they log onto the Toopher-enabled University of Texas at Austin site, Toopher will authenticate. Toopher uses a more secure, out-of-band authentication channel to push details of a login request to the Toopher app on a user’s mobile device. The user can simply allow, or if the request is suspicious, deny and effectively defeat online fraud, preventing any false attempts at logins or manipulation of confidential information.
“We obviously believe strongly in our technology and to have UT share that belief and put their trust in Toopher for 24,000 employees is such validation,” said Josh Alexander, CEO of Toopher. “We also applaud UT for taking a proactive approach to protecting its employees, a group, by the way, my founder and I were once part of.”
"Toopher has been expanding its reach rapidly, especially with positive traction and acceptance within the education industry," said Kyle Cox, IT and Wireless Director at the Austin Technology Incubator. “We think it’s great to see UT developed technology now in place at UT.”
Continuing its focus on the education market, Toopher will be participating in both Educause 2014 (http://www.educause.edu/), September 29 to October 2, in Orlando, FL, and Internet2 2014 Technology Exchange (http://www.internet2.edu/news-events/events/technology-exchange/ ) October 26-30, in Indianapolis, IN.
At Educause, Toopher CEO Josh Alexander will be speaking on Passwordotosis: Solving new higher education problems with contextual authentication, Thurs, October 2 at 9:10 am. This session will explore some of the biggest problems in higher ed data security and risk and discover how to unlock solutions with both mobile and context. More is here: http://www.educause.edu/events/educause-annual-virtual-conference-2014/2014/passwordotosis-solving-new-higher-education-problems-contextual-authentic
At the Technology Exchange, Alexander will be on an authentication panel titled Why Session Security is Important. The panel will be held Tuesday, October 28 at 8:30 am, and more is here: http://meetings.internet2.edu/media/cms_page_media/1057/2014-technology-exchange-program-draft-20140806.pdf.
About Toopher
Toopher is an invisible, location-based multifactor authentication solution designed around user behavior and powered by your phone's location awareness. By marrying the strongest state-of-the-art, true out-of-band pervasive technology with decidedly lean and thoughtful user experience, Toopher automates the authentication process via your mobile device--not only preventing online fraud and identity theft, but creating a security solution that people actually want to use. No more passwords hacks, no more codes. It's simple, secure, and the phone stays in your pocket.
Founded in 2011 by a University of Texas PhD student and an adjunct professor, Toopher is funded by Alsop Louie and is a portfolio company of the Austin Technology Incubator. To learn more and try Toopher, visit http://toopher.com and follow us @toopher.
Laura Beck, Toopher, http://toopher.com, +1 (512) 786-1098, [email protected]
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