November - 2008 issue > Spotlight: Enterprise Security

By si Team

Sunnyvale, California headquartered Arcot Systems has reason to feel good. “We were a pioneer in the authentication segment where we co-invented one of the earliest and most successful federated identity systems – 3-D Secure for ePayment authentication. Today Arcot has established its uniqueness and leadership in the market place with multifactor authentication offerings for web-based applications of all kinds,”says proud CEO Ram Varadarajan. A key player in protecting and verifying digital identities, today most top financial institutions, pharmaceutical companies, and eShopping sites rely on Arcot’s software-only solutions to prevent online fraud and identity theft.

A slew of companies are already providing strong authentication methods in hardware through one-time-password (OTP) tokens, biometric solutions and smart cards. But Arcot has been challenging all these hardware-based online authentication technologies with its one-of-a-kind software-based PKI authentication system. Recently the company unveiled the A-OK On-Demand service which provides strong authentication for web-based applications for both in-house applications and SaaS applications.including Google Apps Premier Edition from Google and Salesforce from Salesforce.com. Arcot also joined the prestigious Google Enterprise Professional programand the Force.com AppExchange.

Co-founded in 1997 by current president and CEO Ram Varadarajan. Arcot is privately held and employs more than 130 people worldwide. It also has a technology center in Bangalore, India. The company has several customers worldwide. “Arcot provides strong authentication and digital signing solutions that are easily deployed, low-cost, and scalable,” says Varadarajan.

With the over $3billion market worldwide for authentication products, Arcot has a huge opportunity to tap. In the year 2007, it announced the closing of an $11.0 million Series A Prime round of funding, including new investment by Adobe Ventures and INVESCO Private Capital. Prior investors in the company, Accel Partners, Goldman Sachs, Onset Ventures, Raza Ventures, Skandinaviska Enskilda Banken (SEB), and Wachovia Strategic Ventures also participated in the round. Being voted as “Hot company 2008” at “Technosium 2008 Executive Summit, now Varadarajan and his highly talented team is all set to accelerate the growth of the company.

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