NetKnights: Securing Identity On-Premise

Cornelius Kölbel, CEO

“Although, a good number of technology vendors and customers are riding on the hype wave—‘cloud’, I believe that there still exist companies who prefer on-premise solutions over cloud hosting for certain services like authentication,” begins Cornelius Kölbel, CEO, NetKnights. “We are here to help such companies!” NetKnights is an IT security company that provides services and products for two-factor authentication (2FA), identity management, and encryption. The company’s flagship offering, privacyIDEA is an open source-based 2FA system that offers organizations the complete ownership over the source code while providing administrators complete control over the system setup.

‘Successful 2FA is a matter of smooth workflows,” says Kölbel. As a modular on-premise system, privacyIDEA allows organizations to achieve a highly secure environment for business data and identities. Originally built on the one-time password (OTP) model, the system easily adapts to new token types like x509 certificates, SSH keys, SMS and many more. privacyIDEA’s unique feature, Event Handler, allows the administrator to easily define automatic system actions under critical conditions. With Event Handler, customers can flexibly design their authentication and management workflows and adapt them along with the 2FA system to their existing operations to match the needs of their users.

In contrast to the one-size-fits-all approach to authentication, NetKnights comprehends customers’ requirements and their challenges and tailors the 2FA system accordingly.

Successful 2FA is a matter of smooth workflows

Working closely with its geographically distributed clientele, the company provides remote assistance to set up the system and configure the settings based on individual business needs. NetKnights has achieved wide success in catering to the needs of the organizations from various industries, including healthcare, where the privacyIDEA system works in tandem with other IT products such as Citrix NetScaler, CiscoASA, other VPNs, and firewalls.

NetKnights also assists universities that have complex IT infrastructures, required to provide 2FA to the existing users and to handle a massive number of students, entering and leaving the university every year.

Through Event Handler, the organization automates processes like onboarding, authentication and retirement making it easy for the users to authorize themselves to the network and keeping the work load for IT staff at a minimum.

Holding an immense experience in identity management and authentication, NetKnights provides an array of relevant consulting services to deliver an optimal solution. NetKnights not only visits the customer’s premises to provide personalized consultancy but also conducts workshops to understand their requirements and design workflows. These consulting services range from the integration of hand-picked software into the client’s existing systems for the development of automation systems and connectors to streamline the workflows. With such flexibility and ease-of-use, NetKnights has garnered clientele that includes the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and the University of Marburg.

Customers can reap the advantages of NetKnights’ support offered at three levels—small business, enterprise, and provider levels—each of which differs in the response time and support type. The Enterprise Edition is an all-batteries-included service, with packaging for distributions like Ubuntu and Red Hat Enterprise Linux, depending upon the customer’s need. With the Enterprise Edition, customers get the support as well as the service-level agreements which includes extensive consultancy. On the other hand, the provider level is for service providers who can install privacyIDEA multiple times for an unlimited number of users.

NetKnights does believe in Open Source and in privacyIDEA as a vendor independent, sustainable authentication solution. This means that the system can be seamlessly used even after a firm undergoes mergers or acquisitions. NetKnights aims to continue expanding its footprint as the on-premise market for the authentication system continues to grow.