Corillian Corp. says the site authentication element it has added to its Intelligent Authentication antifraud product is less taxing on network communications systems than competing technology.
Companies use site authentication products to demonstrate to customers that the Web sites they are using are legitimate.
TrueStamp, the element the Hillsboro, Ore., online banking vendor company's added Wednesday, presents a personalized image to the user. Products from EMC Corp.'s RSA Security Inc. and from Entrust Inc. also use images, but the TrueStamp image is generated from a phrase the user creates.
If the phrase is "I like chocolate," the image will be a picture of that phrase, distorted but still legible. It is similar to tests some Web sites use to determine if a visitor is an automated agent.
Some Web-based financial services providers have found that authentication systems that rely on images of things like pets and flowers can tie up their operations.
For example, ING Bank FSB, the Wilmington, Del., thrift that uses the ING Direct brand, told American Banker in August that it was surprised at the amount of bandwidth needed to enroll its customers for RSA's software.
Technology Credit Union of San Jose said in March that the enrollment process last year for the software, then offered by PassMark Security Inc., had slowed down its Web site.
In response, RSA (which bought PassMark in April) has said that it helps banks with software and address bandwidth issues. For example, it said it advised Technology Credit Union not to pair the enrollment for its software with the enrollment for a new login process.
Greg Hughes, Corillian's chief security executive, said in an interview that TrueStamp is designed to streamline the enrollment process and create images that take less space on a hard drive.
"It was done with the bandwidth concern in mind," Mr. Hughes said.
Avivah Litan, a vice president and research director at the Stamford, Conn., market research company Gartner Inc., said that differentiating on bandwidth "is splitting hairs at this point."
Still, "Corillian had to have their own solution" for site-to-user authentication, so it had to write software for this purpose, she said. "Site authentication is incredibly important, and it's important for an online banking vendor to have a solution."
