Balfour Beatty Capital rolls out remote security system

Adopts two-factor authentication for mobile workers

Investment company Balfour Beatty Capital (BB) has introduced a new security system to protect its remote network.

The company – the investment arm of the larger engineering group – will use CryptoCard's Crypto-Mas two-factor authentication to secure remote network access for its mobile workforce.

Initially, Crypto-Mas will be rolled out to half of BB's 750 staff via software token application for BlackBerry smartphones.

CryptoCard will be integrated into the company's existing security suite and used across network applications, including SharePoint server and email.

Harvey Seddon, technical manager at Balfour Beatty Capital, said: "Some 80 per cent of our staff use laptops and work across multiple sites most of the time, so we needed a reliable authentication solution that works on mobile devices. The great advantage of the BlackBerry tokens is that passwords can be accessed at any time and tokens cannot be misplaced or lost."

Coventry City Council is another recent convert to Crypto-Mas; it introduced the system to 500 workers at the end of January 2011.