Social Networks: Partnership between Socure and ValidSoft

• The US developer Socure and the Irish ValidSoft, subsidiary of the strong authentication specialist Elephant Talk Communications, have partnered to help protect social media users.

• Socure will add Validsoft’s Secure Mobile Architecture for Real-Time Transactions (SMART) to its own security offer. The platform, called SMARTsocial, aims at improving Internet users’ authentication and ensuring the integrity of their transactions. It should be made available this year.

• ValidSoft focuses on (online or phone-based) CNP fraud prevention: both involved parties are mutually identified and so is the transaction itself.

Source: ValidSoft’s press release

• This month, several data breaches have made it up to the headlines, for instance, the incidents that would have enable publication of 8 million LinkedIn passwords by Russian attackers. The network of 150 million professional users is now at risk of seeing this information scattered around (including data to be found in the associated e-mails). In this case, flaws in the encryption algorithm in use are pointed out, as well as poor passwords selection. However, in response to these attacks, the social network has opted for stricter measures and improved the security of its passwords (hash functions and salting).

• A class action has been filed (under the impulsion of a premium user charged 26.95 dollar per months). The demanded compensation reached five million dollars.

• Under these circumstances, payers’ interest in solutions such are the one propose by Socure and the Irish ValidSoft might go increasing.