TruU's Passwordless Security Solutions – A Telarus Case Study for Technology Advisors

Introduction to TruU and Case Study Overview

Everybody. Welcome. I’m your host today, Josh Lupresto, SVP of sales engineering at Telarus, and this is a case study. Today on with us, we have got mister Ryan Lindsay, VP of sales from TruU. Ryan, welcome on, buddy.

Josh, thanks for having me today.

Ryan, so we’re gonna get in here. We’re gonna talk two examples. We’re gonna talk, passwordless, and, we’re gonna talk about some badgeless. Right?

We’re gonna get, you know, kind of that virtual net physical side. But before we do that, you guys have some pretty compelling reasons as to why the company was created, some of the problems early on. Walk us through that thirty seconds. How did TruU get here?

Why were you founded? What does it do?

Founding Principles and Human Error in Cybersecurity

Yeah. So, seven years ago is actually when we were founded and started this business.

We really set out to take on what we identified as the biggest problem, and that’s specifically human error, human, mistakes, misuse, human risk factor. In fact, if you look back statistically at all the cyber breaches that have occurred, seventy five to eighty percent of them, sometimes I’ve seen statistics as high as ninety percent, say it is in fact that human error, misuse, miscue. So how do you solve for this? How do you protect organizations against their biggest problem, which is the human entity and the bodies that they have in in place there today?

Passwordless Authentication: A Case Study in Healthcare

So so walk us through an example then. Right? Where you guys fit from a passwordless perspective? Let’s let’s use that. How did you get brought into a deal? What was the problem? And then where did the passwordless side of TruU kinda plug into that?

Yeah.

We see a lot of this most commonly. One in particular, it’s just working last week with the health care organization, actually. You can imagine they have multiple locations. They have shared workstations.

You have physicians and nurses walking around from, shared workstation in one room into room from room a to room b.

How do you can how do you ensure that that nurse or practitioner is in fact who they say they are and authorized to be accessing the data, especially with HIPAA in place today that lives on those machines? Whether that’s in the virtual world or whether that’s, you know, locally, it doesn’t matter. How do I ensure that Josh is, in fact, doctor LaPresto when he comes into that exam room? So for us, that was a big way to leverage biometrics authentication or passwordless auth. So multifactor is great, but you’re still sending off a one time passcode to somewhere in some fashion. So the safest way to truly authenticate a user is, hey. Is this enrolled device in my possession, and am I in fact doctor LaPresto by way of biometric authentication?

For that organization, that was exactly what they were looking for. It also helps offset a lot of the, IT support cases they see come in around password management, as you could imagine. I think that’s the number one help desk IT ticket that you see today is that password resets. Right? So, that gets eliminated from their shorthanded IT staff. The user experience gets improved for the nurses and physicians, and you have the most securest way of authentication protecting your data, your assets, and especially as it relates to HIPAA, that is very important to be compliant.

Love that. Love that example. Any any misconceptions that you know, we’re talking about this this fits into the identity and access management bucket. Is there any misconceptions either from that customer or just any other opportunities that you’ve worked on where they they think the identity solutions they have are good enough and do enough? What what do you see people bumping into that they think, ah, I’m I’m good with what I have?

Yeah. You know what? I actually haven’t had it quite to that tune yet where they say, hey. I’m I’m good. I have no interest. Right? And, you know, knock on wood, that’s been the case for us.

But I do think that when we go in and see an environment, it’s, hey. I have a d. Hey. I have username and passwords.

Hey. Maybe I’m using Windows Hello. That’s another, you know, method that Microsoft’s now coming into this passwordless space with. Well, that’s great for your workstation login.

But what about your line of business applications? Right? Those mission critical applications that actually hold that, you know, in this case, the the HIPAA data, right, where patient information is living. I mean, do you wanna just secure that with a simple username and password that we’re seeing get hacked?

Three point three million password attacks every hour. There’s a fun fact. Yeah. You wanna play with that high level of risk, and most organizations don’t, especially now.

And so how do you take that second step to truly do your, yourself a serve you know, adjust service by protecting it and taking those next steps to ensure folks that are accessing that data are, in fact, who they say they are.

Love it.

Transitioning to Badgeless Security Solutions

Let’s let’s shift gears then. You you’ve got some other great products out there, kind of this physical, this badgeless security. Walk us through, you know, an opportunity that you came in, what were you brought in for, and then how did the badgeless side really solve things for the customer?

Yeah.

Three weeks ago, actually, a Telarus engineer brought us in. A great job with the the team at Telarus there.

Got on with a partner and identified an opportunity for Badgeless. So think about get rid of the key cards, get rid of the fobs, now use your mobile device, Bluetooth technology, and biometrics facial recognition to access physical door space.

In this case, it was actually for, very large data center that’s being built, currently under construction, and the customer had the requirement that biometrics was a must for access into these data halls.

So Polaris engineer identified this as a great opportunity for TruU, brought us in. We did the call with the partner alongside with the customer and showed them our solution in real time.

We have some really great demos. So whether that’s on the Badgeless Badgeless side physical or even Asperless side for digital, anytime our clients get engaged with us, we’re doing live demos with them.

So this customer, based upon the requirements they had for biometrics physical building space access to access these data centers and specific spaces within the data center. Think about privileged access management now on the physical side.

Love the solution. We integrate with a variety of different access control systems.

This case, HID, we integrate with them. So it was a win win, very quick moving. The partner actually was already awarded the contract from the customer side, and all I had to do was go open a PO. So really get great use case on that one. Starts off with five thousand users, potential to grow north of a hundred thousand users. So Love it. Pretty substantial opportunity if you think about it that way.

The Evolution of Security: Moving Beyond Passwords

Yeah. I love it. I mean, so to kinda put a button on this or put a bow on this, it it seems like we’ve done things a certain way. Passwords, very kind of binary. We’ve done things like badge readers, a very simple, basic way, very binary. You guys are really adding some some dynamicness, some real time validation to these, and that seems like, you know, we we’ve gotta be as dynamic as the bad guys are sixteen steps ahead. So it brings a it brings a killer component to that.

No. Absolutely. You know, I was traveling back from an event, and I was reading an article that was posted in the Wall Street. It said, forget username and passwords.

Your body’s becoming the next virtual batch. And we’re seeing that today. We’re seeing it across the stack as consumers, b to b, b to b to c. It doesn’t matter.

We are, moving in this next technology wave of this world of passkeys and passwordless.

And for us, yes. You’re right. It’s not just protecting the digital assets, but how can we get this component into place for physical as well.

So so final couple thoughts here.

Engaging Partners: Key Conversation Starters

If I’m a partner, I’m listening to this. I’m thinking, okay. I’ve got some some folks that I could probably tee these conversations up. Just maybe a cup couple, quick conversation starters, different kind of questions to ask. What do you want partners to be thinking about talking to the customers about this?

Yeah. I think it’s you know, how are you managing your your AD and credentials today within the organization? I think that’s something that all organizations struggle with regardless of how they’re doing it. Seem to always be understaffed. There’s the one system admin that, you know, holds the keys to the kingdom and, you know, it’s that what happens if he gets hit by a bus tomorrow type of scenario.

So how do you get a little bit more dynamic in that sense? I think that’s a great conversation starters and typically starts with an IT director, you know, in some cases, a CIO or a CSO. I mean, you go in the world of CSO. Now you’re having a security business conversation.

To switch gears a little bit, how do you enhance that security posture of your organization, eliminate, threat of factors such as phishing. Right? Because this is a new thing. It’s I don’t know if you’re familiar with the term phishing resistant, but it’s actually coming into cyber insurance policies now. Is your organization phishing resistant?

Now TruU checks the box on that. Right? Because there’s no credentials that can ever be compromised. Now you’re talking about a biometrics authentication.

I mean, they’d have to have the you know, still your device and have, the Presto biometrics there if they wanted to get into get into your workstation. So, I think those are some great conversation starters that you can begin having. And then there’s always consolidation, of platforms and reduction of cost associated with rolling out a solution like Treo as well. You think about all the SSOs, MFAs, password managers, password reset technologies that exist. I mean, that’s four different platforms right there. Those all go away and gets consolidated onto this now stronger security, better improved user experience, single source of truth platform.

Future Innovations and Product Roadmap for TruU

Final thoughts. Thirty seconds, product road map, as much as you can share, where is this going, what’s coming next, what do we need to look out for?

Yeah. I think we got some really neat stuff. I mean, TruU, we’re a product first company. So we take every dollar that, that we have as far as investments to get right back into r and d so that we can stay on the forefront of this this area of identity management.

Some of the neat things that we have coming that stay stay tuned for is definitely gonna be improvements to, shared workstations.

I shared that in a use case earlier today. I think you’ll see a lot of improvements as it comes to the user experience around that shared workstations and different ways of which we can play it. The second I would say is our continuous authentication. I know I didn’t dive into that today, but we have a really neat value added service.

We call it TCAT. But this is where I say, hey. Sure. I’ve done the biometrics authentication into my workstation.

But how do I continuously ensure that that user is, in fact, who they say they are behind that keyboard for that entire eight hour working day? So some neat stuff that we’re doing leveraging AI, machine learning, picking up on actual signals of that user behavior, maybe environment surrounding them to continuously authenticate and ensure that person’s authorized to be in that workstation.

At a high level, couple different solutions that we have coming in q four into q one. That’ll be just a tremendous value added service to what we’re already doing today.

K. Good stuff, buddy. Lots of good examples there. Hope everybody gets to kinda dive in.

Go check this out. If you haven’t seen TruU, if you haven’t seen Ryan Lindsay, get in there. Go do a demo of this, and I think it will open up your, your mind to some of these complex things that we can help the customers be ready for and to get even better with secure and even tighter. So, Ryan, thanks for coming on, buddy.

Really appreciate it.

Josh, thank you so much for having me, and, look forward to seeing you here soon.

Awesome. Thanks, everybody. Go check it out.