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Cryptographic Credential-Free Authentication
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What's the relationship between Circle Access Desktop and Circle Access Mobile?

Circle Access 360 integrates:

  1. Circle Access Mobile - your smartphone is your log-in
  2. Circle Access Desktop - your device is your log-in

The technical details of this are beyond the scope of this article, but we will try to summarize briefly here.

Circle Access Mobile (CAM)

With CAM, your smartphone is you. It accomplishes this by securing two very strong factors:

  1. Something You Have. Your smartphone. We all have these 24 x 7 - they are inseparable from us! CAM leverages cryptography to bind a unique private key to your device, which only your device can have.
  2. Something You Are. Smartphones can of course be lost or stolen. So Circle adds proof of you - your biometrics. This type of scanning is of course built-in to most phones today, and CAM enables the developer or end user to require biometrics to either:
    • be used at the start of each session, or authentication; or
    • continuously during a session.

Circle Access Desktop (CAD)

CAD leverage cryptography to create something even more interesting: a Circle Secure Digital Capsule. These have several very powerful characteristics.

  1. They are protected with AES 256 encryption.
  2. They can be created and controlled either by:
    • an application on behalf of the Web server that controls it; or
    • an end user.
  3. In the former case, this enables Web servers to store secrets, tokens, encryption keys for digital signatures, and other things that are useful for authentication and identity verification. But they can also store any kind, and any amount of data for all kinds of other purposes.
  4. In the latter case, this is useful for an end user to be able to replicate and synchronize the capsule that has been authorized on device to other devices that user has.
    • That is critical for device-based credential-free authentication.
    • But once again useful for all kinds of different purposes!

So, with CAD, the device on which a Secure Capsule is installed and authenticated to be controlled by YOU is your log-in. No credentials, zero friction.

Secure Capsules are themselves then bound to the device cryptographically - each capsule can only be opened and used on the specific device it was authenticated upon.

Secure Capsules can also be used to store biometric data. When you do this, then the capsules are bound to YOU independent of the device. That has many useful and powerful applications.

Circle Access 360 = Circle Access Mobile + Desktop Together

With Circle Access 360, an authentication process is conducted that enables your smartphone (with Circle Access Mobile) to securely communicate and control the secure capsules on your devices created by Circle Access Desktop. This delivers many important benefits:

  1. Added convenience and flexibility for end users. They can select which model of log-in is preferred.
  2. Even more security. In many different ways that will be the topic of an entire white paper. But as one example, now biometric authentication on your Smartphone can be used to enhance secure log-in on your laptop or PC. You don't have to worry about office colleagues - or family members - sneaking on with your PIN while you are away!

This integrated capability then powers many other powerful capabilities across our product line. The bottom line is that 1 + 1 here equals far more than 2!

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How Circle Access Mobile, Circle Access Desktop, and Circle Access 360 works, including API details, related forum topics, and relevant FAQs for developers

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