Identity and access vendor Imprivata today announced a new feature called ProveID for its OneSign appliances, to give firms a way of integrating strong authentication into application workflows and transactions.

Imprivata says the feature should allow customers such as independent software vendors (ISVs) to deal with the increase in compliance requirements throughout the industry. Using an open standards-based applications programming interface (API), ProveID has support for all major forms of two-factor authentication, including fingerprint biometrics, one-time password tokens and smart cards, claims Imprivata.

Imprivata's EMEA Operations vice president Wayne Parslow said that OneSign is positioned as performing an identity convergence role. "The primary roll of our appliance is to synchronise all the different identity repositories to give an individual identity which will allow access," he said.

Parslow said that ProveID takes authentication to the logical next step, since with some applications users may want to challenge people again with strong authentication.

"To do this normally requires pretty hefty application modification - all we require is a simple trigger to tell our system at which point in the application we need the authentication request," added Parslow. "For some it may be no more than a couple of strings – it does depend on how much control you have over that application. If it is a web application, you may just need to fire out an XML trigger."

Imprivata's chief executive, Omar Hussain, commented that as well as helping firms meet regulatory compliance, ProveID helps firms “institute good risk management".

Imprivata's OneSign platform has OneSign Authentication Management (AM), which replaces network access passwords with strong authentication, OneSign Single Sign-On (SSO), to sort out password management, security and user access, and OneSign Physical/Logical, for integrating building and network access systems to enable location-based authentication.

Commenting on the cost of the system, Parslow said: "We always ship a redundant pair of appliances and the entry level is for 200 users – that would cost about £10,000. Our average customer in the UK has about 2,500 users, with our largest customer having 12-15,000."