Scorpion Software Blog

Scorpion Software's office will be closed for Canada Day Weekend

On Thursday, July 1st, all of Canada will be celebrating Canada Day. This is a national statutory holiday celebrating the birthday of our great country.

As a result, Scorpion Software will be closed for the long weekend, with staff celebrating the holiday with their families.

To those celebrating, we hope you have a safe and enjoyable holiday! And to our neighbouring customers down south in the United States, a happy 4th of July to you!

Droid does... AuthAnvil SoftTokens

It's here! If you have a Droid based device, it can now be your AuthAnvil SoftToken. Be it a Google Nexus One, a Motorola Droid or an HTC Incredible... you're good to go. Actually, AuthAnvil SoftTokens have been tested to work on any Android based smartphone that is running Android OS 1.6 or newer! So what are you waiting for? If you have licenses to AuthAnvil SoftTokens you can automatically download them over the air (OTA) to you Windows Mobile, Blackberry, iPhone or Android device! Simply click the link below from your smartphone to begin. Download your AuthAnvil SoftToken Now!

Protecting Windows Server Core and HyperV Server with strong authentication

If you find yourself in a Microsoft world, utilizing Windows Server 2008 Core or HyperV Server to deliver your virtualization stack, you know that the base parent OS is the most critical. After all, a successful breach to that parent permits an attacker to gain access to all children... the critical virtual machines running your business.

We have had several clients reach out asking us to provide a way to enforce strong two-factor authentication on this target. Since we leverage many benefits of the .NET framework, this has in the past been difficult to accomplish.

Not any more.

We are pleased to announced the general availability of our new AuthAnvil Credential Provider v3.5, which now offers a simple way to conduct a silent mode installation onto Windows Server 2008 Core and HyperV Server to provide AuthAnvil strong authentication to the base OS. You can use your favorite automation tools like Active Directory Software Distribution Policies, System Center Software Deployment Packs or Kaseya automation scripts to push this to those targets automatically. And the silent installation can be done inplace, with no need to reboot the server.

And you can do it manually. It couldn't be any simpler than:

msiexec /q /i AAWinLogonCP.msi CMDLINE="INI=aalogon.ini"

The result is an extremely simple and cost effective two-factor authentication protection scope to all your critical virtualization infrastructure running Microsoft Windows Servers using AuthAnvil.

It is available as an update for FREE to all our customers. You can download the latest agent from the Customer Portal.

Enjoy! 

Using an AuthAnvil SoftToken on your iPad

So I was asked today by one of our customers if our AuthAnvil SoftTokens work on Apple iPads.

You bet!! What better way to show that then with a picture:

It's just a much BIGGER SoftToken. ;-)

How do you add one? Simply search for "AuthAnvil" in the AppStore and select the iPhone version. It works on both devices, as you can see in the picture above.

Now, what if you want to have BOTH devices with tokens for your account? That can be done too. Simply create a "Grouped User" that is your username, and then assign the tokens to accounts that are added to a group. For example, you could create one account called "Alice iPhone" and issue a SoftToken to Alice's iPhone. Then create one called "Alice iPad" and assign it to her iPad. Finally, create a grouped user called "Alice", and assign the other two accounts to it.

The net result? When Alice logs into a resource protected by AuthAnvil, you will get an audit event that would say something like:

"Grouped user 'Alice' was logged on by member 'Alice iPad'"

Not only will you know if it was Alice, you will know which device was present during login.

Pretty cool huh?
 

Sneak Peak: AuthAnvil AddIn for Kaseya 2

I am currently in Vegas at the Kaseya Connect conference and enjoying the chance to talk to Kaseya users about their experiences with IT automation. It's interesting to hear how so many want to learn how to get more out of their Kaseya investment. That's what this conference is all about.

I have also enjoyed showing how we are leveraging the awesome new powers in the Kaseya 2 platform to deliver IT automation for AuthAnvil deployment, management and monitoring. If you are at the conference, come to my session tomorrow at 2pm to see this in action. For those who can't make it, below is a screenshot... a sneak peak if you will... of just what is capable in K2, and just what we are doing with it.