Haider Iqbal | Director of Product Marketing
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Haider Iqbal | Director of Product Marketing
More About This Author >
The KuppingerCole Leadership Compass for Enterprises has recognized Thales OneWelcome as an Overall, Innovation, Product, and Market Leader in the Passwordless Authentication market. Analysts praise the platform for offering a versatile set of features designed to facilitate passwordless experiences for all user groups.
Thales OneWelcome Leads the Passwordless Market
In addition to naming Thales OneWelcome a leader in all categories in the Passwordless Authentication for Enterprises market, KuppingerCole rates the platform five out of five for Security, Functionality, Deployment, Interoperability, and Usability.
Analysts commend Thales for providing organizations with a “versatile set of identity applications suitable for various use cases, including customer, partner, and supplier identities.” The report recognizes Thales OneWelcome’s extensive support for passkeys, the ability to synchronize passkeys across various devices and low-assurance scenarios, and verifiable credential support through the User Journey Orchestration module.
KuppingerCole Analysts also praise Thales’s range of authentication mechanisms, including hardware tokens, smart cards, and software-based authenticators, which the report says ensures “secure access across diverse environments and devices.”
Other key strengths include Thales’s robust partner ecosystem, modern UIs and dashboards, support for verifiable credentials, multiple security certifications (including FIDO and biometrics), ability to comply with country-specific regulatory requirements, and compliance support for a wide range of standards, including FIPS, ISO 27001, SOC 2 Type II, and eIDAS.
It urges “organizations in highly regulated industries and security-conscious organizations in both the public and private sectors that require strong authentication” to consider the Thales OneWelcome Identity Platform.
Passwordless 360°
The report also notes how the Thales Passwordless 360° strategy complements the OneWelcome Identity Platform, addressing the challenges organizations face when scaling passwordless authentication and reducing the risk of fragmented solutions.
Passwordless 360° offers the broadest coverage and flexibility across all user types, allowing organizations to take advantage of the newest technologies, such as FIDO passkeys, that provide the full potential of going passwordless while leveraging previous investments in passwordless technologies.
The critical steps of this comprehensive framework for planning and evaluating passwordless implementations include:
- Charting the user ecosystem, including workforce, customers, and partners, to evaluate and understand the access journeys and potential security gaps.
- Determine risk-based authentication methods and strengths for each identified group.
- Perform a gap analysis to identify and mitigate remaining vulnerabilities.
Thales helps organizations adopt the Passwordless 360° approach by smoothly migrating customers from passwords to synced passkeys for low-assurance use cases and device-bound passkeys for high-assurance use cases. It also aids in FIDO deployment, controls the FIDO keys' life cycle, and eradicates passwords from the authentication flow when accessing Windows desktops or web applications.
Why do Businesses Need Passwordless Authentication?
Passwords are insecure, inconvenient, and outdated. Although the Internet has changed almost beyond recognition in the past few decades, password authentication has remained virtually the same.
These changes have rendered the password no longer fit for purpose. The average person manages as many as 100 passwords, meaning users use workarounds—like creating simple, easy-to-remember passwords or reusing the same password across multiple services—that present a security risk. Moreover, passwords can be costly and result in poor user experience.
As the name suggests, passwordless authentication is a secure, user-friendly alternative to passwords. Instead of creating and remembering countless unique passwords, users can authenticate themselves with hardware tokens, wearables, smart cards, or software-based authenticators.
Switching to passwordless authentication can bring about many benefits. However, the KuppingerCole report reveals that the primary drivers for passwordless authentication adoption are cost reduction (7.9%), regulatory compliance (8.2%), improved security (30.1%), and enhanced user experience (53.8%).
When looking for passwordless authentication solutions, organizations need to take into account several factors, such as security, ease of implementation, interoperability, and cost-effectiveness. User experience is also crucial, as smooth authentication processes are key for widespread adoption. By carefully considering these factors and comparing options from various vendors, enterprises can find the solution that aligns best with their specific requirements and preferences.
Check out the KuppingerCole Leadership Compass: Passwordless Authentication for Enterprises report to learn more about the passwordless authentication market and Thales’ OneWelcome’s place within it.
Also available from KuppingerCole are the KuppingerCole Leadership Compass: Passwordless Authentication for Consumers 2024 and the KuppingerCole Leadership Compass: Market Report and Guide for CIAM Solutions, both featuring Thales, respectively.