Intermedia, a cloud IT services provider, gives its customers and partners the freedom to focus on business, not IT. Intermedia does that by offering 30+ essential business cloud IT applications with a single point of control and backing it with high levels of reliability, security and support. Intermedia has 700+ employees worldwide, serves over 70,000 businesses and 1 million paid users and supports 6,000 active partners from around the globe.

Intermedia prides itself on security and invests considerable human and capital resources to help ensure high levels of protection for their customers and partners. To enhance its fraud prevention strategy, the company wanted to use 2FA to provide an additional layer of account security beyond just usernames and passwords for their Web-based accounts in order to prevent account compromise/takeover and protect accounts from man-in-the-middle attacks, spear phishing attempts and user credential and password breaches. However, Intermedia did not want to make its user authentication process too difficult to manage, inconvenient for users, or costly.

Intermedia evaluated several vendors and ultimately chose TeleSign because it offered scalability, performance and impressive data services response times. Intermedia deployed TeleSign’s Push Verify SDK (software development kit) to build out a 2FA solution using “one-click” push notifications and soft tokens through their existing native iOS and Android mobile applications, allowing end-users to gain secure account access quickly and easily.

Intermedia also deployed two other user authentication methods using TeleSign’s SMS Verify and Voice Verify products to give their users a choice. During account registration, users are able to self-select which 2FA method is best for them: one-click push notifications or soft tokens, SMS or voice verification one-time passcodes. Most users prefer push notifications because they’re quick, intuitive to use and involve fewer steps.

The TeleSign solution also included TelePortal, a customer dashboard where Intermedia is able use their own user interface and management tool to send test messages, perform manual verifications and view reports and transaction logs for easy monitoring of authentication traffic. This also made the integration process even easier.

Increased Web-based account protection- significantly reducing the risk of unauthorized access

Intermedia is now able to provide greater protection for online account access, usage and recovery. The company feels confident that account logins are legitimate and that the risk of account compromise/takeover has been reduced. This has allowed Intermedia to show customers that account security is of utmost importance.

Completely Intermedia-branded 2FA experience

One of the key requirements for Intermedia was the ability to maintain their brand experience throughout the authentication process. Intermedia was able to completely brand their VeriKey application, giving it a look and feel consistent with their other mobile applications. This made finding and installing the application easy for users.

“I was impressed with the speed of integration of the TeleSign services. It was considerably less than most of our other projects.” Richard Walters, Senior Vice President of Security Products at Intermedia.

Seamless end-user experience with one-click push notifications adding security without increasing support calls

Push Verify has enabled Intermedia to incorporate a seamless “oneclick” authentication process, connecting their Web-based accounts with the Intermedia VeriKey mobile application. Push notifications on a mobile device prompt users to “Allow” or “Deny” each access request. A valid user simply taps the “Allow” button and they gain access to their Single Sign-On (SSO) dashboard or specific web application-- making logins much faster. The Push Verify SDK usesany data stream, including WiFi, even when a carrier data signal is out of range. With a seamless and intuitive user experience, Intermedia has added security without an increase in support calls.

Reduced authentication costs by using in-app push notifications

Push Verify was also selected for a larger majority of their users, which has helped Intermedia reduce authentication costs, since in-app push notifications are completed at a lower cost than SMS and voice-based one-time passcodes (OTP).