HID Global Authentication Platform

Organizations in both public and private sectors are seeking modular authentication services to modernize legacy IAM stacks amid rising data leaks and fraud. Stronger authentication—especially risk-adaptive and multi-factor methods—improves security while enabling personalization for consumer and government-to-citizen scenarios, with privacy controls supported through consent management. Authentication has advanced beyond passwords through varied authenticators (biometrics, out-of-band apps, push notifications, hardware tokens) and “invisible” controls such as behavioral analysis, device identity and health, and contextual signals like network and location. These background checks enable continuous, risk-adaptive authentication that only prompts users when anomalies occur.

Regulatory pressure is accelerating adoption. In the EU, PSD2 requires Strong Customer Authentication, and in the US the New York SHIELD Act can impose significant penalties for unauthorized access to personal information. Rather than replacing full IAM suites, many organizations are adopting modular authentication components deployable on-premises or in the cloud. This aligns with the “Identity Fabric” approach: composable, service-based architectures that integrate disparate capabilities, increasingly delivered via containers across IaaS/PaaS/SaaS models.

HID Global (ASSA ABLOY) offers a containerized Authentication Platform spanning authenticators, adaptive risk, recovery, identity vetting, credential provisioning, and consent management, with emphasis on finance, healthcare, and government. It supports interoperability standards (OAuth/OIDC, SAML, RADIUS) and provisioning via LDAP/SCIM. Workforce options include FIDO2-certified Crescendo keys, smart cards, X.509, biometrics, and Windows Hello integration; consumer options include OTP, KBA, and FIPS 140-2-based HID Approve push with transaction signing to meet PSD2 requirements. The platform provides extensive risk policy controls, remote identity proofing via document scan plus selfie matching, developer APIs (REST, WebAuthn), and token exchange for downstream assurance signaling, while noting gaps such as limited third-party compromised-credential intelligence and missing CIAM social login and SaaS/IGA/PAM connectors.

• PSD2 requires Strong Customer Authentication defined as two or more factors plus risk evaluation mechanisms.
• The New York SHIELD Act imposes penalties of up to $250,000 per incident for unauthorized access to personal information.
• HID Global is a subsidiary of ASSA ABLOY Group AB and has its US headquarters in Austin, Texas.
• HID Global runs its managed SaaS in AWS in EU and North American data centers.
• The SaaS version is accredited for ISO 27001 and SSAE SOC 2 Type 1.
• HID Global supports provisioning via LDAP and SCIM.
• HID Global supports OAuth, OIDC, RADIUS, and SAML.
• Crescendo Key USB-A/C authenticators are FIDO 2.0 certified and can achieve NIST SP800-63 IAL 2/3 compliance.
• HID Approve is built on FIPS 140-2 certified asymmetric key cryptography and can be used for transaction signing.
• The product does not currently analyze external feeds of compromised credential intelligence.

• “Authentication is a pre-cursor to enterprise access control: one of many possible inputs to authorization systems.”
• “The unobtrusive means can operate as required in the background, only interrupting users with explicit need for input when deviations from their established baselines occur, leading to continuous, risk-adaptive authentication.”
• “Modular authentication services, whether deployed on-premises or from the cloud are increasingly popular alternatives to full IAM stack upgrades or replacements.”
• “An Identity Fabric is an architecture that can be composed of disparate data sources and capabilities delivered as discrete services.”
• “Identity Fabrics permit organizations to add and upgrade segments of their infrastructure or contract with service providers to meet business objectives in a more agile manner.”
• “B2C and G2C use cases where MFA is present or planned are more often served by having smartphones act as the MFA facilitator.”
• “Remote identity proofing has rapidly gained acceptance and has become a requirement for many consumer-facing businesses as a result of the pandemic.”
• “The administrative interface is intuitive and allows customers to build risk-adaptive authentication policies.”
• “All features of the admin interface are available over APIs, and many customers choose to manage the system via these APIs rather than using the HID Global utility.”
• “Remote identity verification is a valuable feature that facilitates consumer onboarding and identity verification for compliance with KYC regulations.”