Tips for Securing Data in a Mobile World
Though text messaging started out being little more than a medium through which users shared a few words with each other using their smartphone, a funny thing happened. It turns out that many IT organizations are now relying on short message service (SMS) to actually authenticate users.
Thanks to the massive explosion of mobile computing applications, IT organizations have experienced an identity management issue like never before. To help those IT organizations address those issues, Sinch, a provider of voice and messaging services, has created SMS API, an application programming interface (API) that allows organizations to take advantage of the Sinch global communications network to authenticate users.
Sinch CEO Andreas Bernström says the SMS API provides an implementation of a RESTful API that is easily accessible to developers who would rather not build authentication services. Over time, Bernström says Sinch will expose a wider variety of communications services via standard RESTful APIs.
Much like the rest of IT infrastructure, telecommunications services of all types are about to become programmable. In fact, the lines where local and wide area networks begin and end are about to become pretty fuzzy.
In the meantime, IT organizations looking to deploy mobile applications that need to be authenticated before being invoked need to look no further than a simple SMS service.
