Banco Santander Secures 300,000 More Customers with Entrust IdentityGuard

DALLAS, Nov. 13 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- A year ago, the Chilean subsidiary of Banco Santander faced a challenge familiar to many financial institutions: the protection of their online customer base via strong authentication. Their choice to partner with Entrust, Inc. (NASDAQ: ENTU) and deploy the Entrust IdentityGuard versatile authentication platform -- a key component of a layered security approach -- was extremely successful; so much so, in fact, that the financial institution announced the solution has expanded to secure an additional 300,000 users.

"With its diverse options and easy-to-use authenticators, Entrust IdentityGuard was the very best choice to secure our Web portals and protect our customers," said Banco Santander Internet manager Laureano Cuesta. "In fact, it was so successful we did not hesitate to deploy the solution to another 300,000 customers. We had complete confidence that Entrust IdentityGuard would handle the expansion with ease and that Entrust support would be readily available to address any of our questions."

Part of the Santander Group, one of the largest financial groups in the world, Banco Santander originally considered one-time-passcode (OTP) hardware tokens, which would have been much more expensive for their customers. The grid card, which was the authenticator Banco Santander opted to implement, was the perfect choice.

"Banco Santander should be commended for taking a proactive approach to protect consumers online by implementing the right authentication solution -- grid cards, in this case -- to address the needs of their customers," said Entrust Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer Bill Conner. "Part of a layered security approach, Entrust IdentityGuard provides Banco Santander with the ability to bolster online security and tailor authentication according to the risk of their customers' transactions."

During implementation a year ago, Banco Santander branded the Entrust IdentityGuard grid card as "Super Clave" (http://www.santander.cl/campanas/superclave/index.asp). Prior to deploying Entrust IdentityGuard, the bank used password-based two-factor authentication, but now can leverage stronger authentication to protect the integrity of transactions, such as money transfers.

The Entrust IdentityGuard versatile authentication platform not only provides strong authentication, but also can help minimize operational challenges such as burdens to help desks and infrastructure maintenance. A self-service option provides the unique capability to confirm the identity of a user with substitute authentication options -- should the need arise -- effectively minimizing downtime and increasing efficiency.

The platform's flexible deployment options can enable organizations to match strong authentication methods to the level of risk they have determined to be associated with the different types of users, transactions and applications in their environments. In addition to Entrust's patented grid-based authentication technique, the Entrust IdentityGuard versatile authentication platform offers a variety of authentication options ranging from machine and knowledge-based authentication to physical second factors such as the $5 Entrust IdentityGuard Mini Token, which was introduced to the industry earlier this year.

Banco Santander Chile is the largest bank in Chile in terms of loans and deposits. The bank has the highest credit ratings among all Latin American companies with an "A rating" from Standard and Poor's, A+ by Fitch and an A2 rating from Moody's, which are the same ratings assigned to the Republic of Chile. The stock is traded on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE: SAN) and the Santiago Stock Exchange [SSE: Bsantander]. The bank's main shareholder is Santander, which controls 76.71 percent of Banco Santander Chile.

Santander Group, founded in 1857, has more than 129,800 employees, 69 million customers and 2.3 million shareholders. While the group has a large international presence in Europe and the U.K, their Latin America operations include banks in Argentina, Uruguay, Colombia, Brazil, Mexico, Chile, Argentina, Puerto Rico and Venezuela. The organization's primary business pillars consist of retail banking, wholesale banking, asset management and insurance. In 2007, Santander held its 150th anniversary as the world's 12th-largest bank by market cap, the seventh in terms of profit, and the bank with the largest retail network in the western world (10,852 branches).

About Entrust

Entrust (NASDAQ: ENTU) secures digital identities and information for consumers, enterprises and governments in 1,650 organizations spanning 60 countries. Leveraging a layered security approach to address growing risks, Entrust solutions help secure the most common digital identity and information protection pain points in an organization. These include SSL, authentication, fraud detection, shared data protection and e-mail security. For information, call 888-690-2424, e-mail entrust@entrust.com or visit http://www.entrust.com.

Entrust is a registered trademark of Entrust, Inc. in the United States and certain other countries. In Canada, Entrust is a registered trademark of Entrust Limited. All Entrust product names are trademarks or registered trademarks of Entrust, Inc. or Entrust Limited. All other company and product names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners.