Enabling trusted identities onto YubiKeys

We’re living in a more technologically advanced world than we were as recently as a decade ago. Cybersecurity is always evolving, and organizations worldwide are facing an increased level of complex cyber-threats. More stringent compliance regulations and digital transformation have made information security an integral part of every business. Nexus develops security products, notedly the Smart ID platform, enabling organizations to strengthen their internal security measures.

The Smart ID platform enables the management of physical and digital identities with company specific levels of assurance (LoA). We simplify on- and offboarding with the automation of complex security processes, self-service functionalities, approval steps and integration into the IT and physical access environment. Furthermore, we enable governance and audit for compliance reasons.

Yubico is an innovative company with a mission to protect identities and provide a rich user experience in business and private life for account log-in, encryption, and access to shared work devices. Nexus Smart ID supports YubiKeys, Yubico’s hardware security keys, as a native product capability that allows customers to control the full lifecycle management of identities on YubiKeys.

The identity is paramount to digital transformation, and it is essential to any enterprise growth and to digitize the public sector. By enabling identities on YubiKeys, the end-users at an organization can utilize both PKI/PIV and FIDO capabilities to secure their digitalization journey. In particular, based on business drivers, the end-to-end solution will allow users to log-in and authenticate securely, as well as sign and encrypt emails and hard drives, and allows secure validation in shared devices and work-stations environments.

The Smart ID platform consists of an identity manager and middleware that allow the choice of laptops, workstations and mobile devices and that interact with the YubiKeys through native interoperability.

Smart ID has the following key features that can be interesting for your organization using YubiKeys:

• Lifecycle management of YubiKeys, virtual smart cards and traditional smart cards
• Best practice processes for standard use cases that fit enterprise needs
• Attractive self-service portal and automated workflows
• Approval steps to ensure authorized identity issuance
• Synchronization of data with a directory service, HR- and ITSM-systems
• Integration of certificate authorities (CA) from multiple vendors (for instance, public trusted certs for email encryption)
• Object history and reporting to enable auditing and compliance

Smart ID and YubiKeys have the following information security benefits:

• Log-in securely to Windows or cloud services
• Sign or encrypt emails, documents or hard drives
• Support unique profiles in shared device scenarios
• Combine mobile experience with NFC-enabled YubiKeys for an additional security layer