Microsoft’s PhoneFactor enterprise authentication system gets a Windows Phone app

Just two months after Microsoft bought up PhoneFactor to help bolster their enterprise security features, the company has released an official Windows Phone app that is on the Store now.

Simply called PhoneFactor, the app is rather modest in features but that’s a good thing as its job is rather to the point: to receive and manage authentication notifications sent to your phone...

PhoneFactor is a two-step authentication system set up for companies to secure various assets, including VPNs, Active Directory, Azure, Office 365 or any other applications for email, cloud or financial properties. When a login is attempted on an account, a push notification is sent to the phone whereby you can respond with a single tap to verify the action or hit ‘Deny’. If the deed is rejected, this will then set off an anti-fraud chain reaction, alerting your company to the compromised account, preventing potential data theft or illicit financial transactions.

Although Microsoft has only recently purchased the company, it will be interesting to see how they pivot this acquisition within the rest of their enterprise software i.e. if they will keep it separate or look for a deeper, native integration in future products.

For those who work for companies that use PhoneFactor or if you’re a small business owner yourself, you can learn more about the company and their services at their site: www.phonefactor.com. Otherwise, you can pick up the Windows Phone 8 app here in the Store to get started.

Daniel Rubino
Editor-in-chief

Daniel Rubino is the Editor-in-chief of Windows Central, head reviewer, podcast co-host, and analyst. He has been covering Microsoft since 2007 when this site was called WMExperts (and later Windows Phone Central). His interests include Windows, laptops, next-gen computing, and for some reason, watches. Before all this tech stuff, he worked on a Ph.D. in linguistics, watched people sleep (for medical purposes!), and ran the projectors at movie theaters because it was fun.

7 Comments
  • Great job MS, now bring two-factor authentication to Hotmail/Outlook
  • Very nice, but umm ... where is the VPN for WP8? :)
  • Great. My company uses PhoneFactor for our VPN. My only problem is that I get an error when I try and download this app from the Store.
    Error code:c101a006
  • Good old marketplace is on the blink again!
  • Daniel, you continue to tout windows phone features in enterprise but refuse to cover some basic issues that users were promised in windows phone 8.
    Take a look at this thread and please give it some coverage
     
    http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/winphone/forum/wp8-wpemail/getting-error-85010013-when-trying-to-sync/cf059499-3ce3-49e4-8069-ecdccd55a5f9
  • I was able to install this on my Lumia 900. Dear WP Central: please remember us little guys that are still under contract with our WP7 devices!
  • I have to agree, please put an "8" on any article headline that is for WP8 Only. 
    pretty please!
    [admittedly, I don't know if that's the case here or not, but I have seen this confusion in other articles.]