Virtual Token Drive from charismathics enables all flash drives for use of 2-factor authentication with digital identities

US/German software vendor introduces software package turning USB or SD drive commodities into seamless PKI tokens reducing associated hardware costs

Munich, Germany / San Jose, USA - 16 November 2011

charismathics, one of the leaders in PKI identity management today announced its ”virtual token drive”, a soft token-based product that enables all existing flash drives and SD cards for use as smart card or USB key. The company, mainly known for its enterprise solutions, now specifically targets small organizations and individuals with the new product.

Regular smart card architectures are known to be relatively expensive, imply due thought processes and a well-planned management scheme and infrastructure. One of the main cost drivers is the hardware that can easily get up to 50 dollars per seat. While those investments in bigger companies are often based on compliance requirements, smaller organizations do not necessarily need such products for operations like digital signature, but mainly for regular IT security, data and email encryption. Also, the digital certificates and management tools are often under fewer restrictions.

The virtual token drive from charismathics targets just this market. USB flash drives are all-around in the IT environment. By implementing the new software, not only do they turn into smart card “alikes”, but they also enable standard software applications such as Windows Logon, Microsoft Outlook, Adobe Acrobat and Microsoft Word and their inbuilt user identity mechanisms to allow for strong security enhancements. The user is even able to choose his digital identity from trusted Certificate Authorities, this way bridging into real enterprise level security.

Sven Gossel, charismathics Managing Director: “charismathics wants to make digital identities ubiquitous to everyone. Just imagine a world where most people sign their emails or chat messages – there would be little chance for computer viruses to get anywhere any more. The virtual token drive brings us much closer towards that vision.”

The new charismathics product combines the company’s well-known CSSI middleware with a virtual smart card, and can be installed on all Windows and Apple MacBooks. It requires Windows XP and higher, or Mac OS X.5 and higher.