SecureAuth Promotes COO to CEO

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SecureAuth, the access control and management provider, has appointed Jeffrey Kukowski, formerly the company’s COO, as its new CEO, while founder and former CEO Craig Lund remains involved with the business as chairman of the board.

Before joining SecureAuth, Kukowski was COO at Taser International and Axon, and held senior leadership positions at Destinator (now Intrinsync), Cyclone Commerce (now Axway) and Rims (now Cognizant). During his tenure as SecureAuth’s COO, he added customers and offerings to the company’s portfolio.

Kukowski tells Channel Partners he is a “big proponent of making the pie bigger for trusted partners.” Most of the company’s annual recurring revenue is “achieved with our channel partners,” he said.

“A good portion of our growth via partners last year was driven not only by our efforts to bring partners into our existing customers to add additional value, but also via software development investments with other IAM solutions that help partners drive greater connected security value to their customers,” he said. “It is an exciting time to take a more inclusive approach as our customers and the market are demanding it.”{ad}

SecureAuth’s investment in resources, both human and capital, to support its partner community “has grown and will allow us to further enhance our partner ecosystem with the appropriate blend of partners – by size, type and geography,” Kukowski said.

“The way organizations are securing themselves needs to be rethought for identity and access management,” he said. “With 63 percent of data breaches attributed to attackers walking through the front door with stolen credentials, leading organizations are taking a different approach to how they manage identities and access. These companies understand that they can provide security past a second factor without bothering users unless there is risk.”

Also Wednesday, SecureAuth announced it has added phone number fraud prevention capabilities to its product line. It allows organizations to identify, block and protect against attacker attempts trying to exploit second-factor authentication delivery methods to phone numbers and mobile devices.

“It is often credentials themselves that are targeted, either directly or opportunistically, to be used in later breaches,” said Keith Graham, SecureAuth’s chief technology officer. “Organizations are deploying adaptive access-control methods to prevent the misuse of stolen credentials, but attackers are evolving to take advantage of SMS delivery methods. By performing multiple pre-authentication risk checks, including phone number fraud prevention and other techniques, organizations can determine their customer, third-party and employee identities with confidence while still delivering a pain-free user experience.”