Scalable Capital is a leading fintech in Europe providing digital asset management to investors through their neo brokerage system. Scalable’s mission is to democratize investment by bringing people and technology-based investment together.
“Engaging with Futurae is not only a synonym for a rewarding partnership but also for reliability, security, and scalability. Futurae is able to successfully relieve the business risk of security and cost with outstanding technology that onboards users smoothly from the get-go.” - Andreas Schranzhofer, CTO at Scalable Capital
Sharpening security with Futurae
In 2020, Scalable made a business decision towards higher security for their users by working with Futurae. The partnership focused on moving away from SMS authentication to Futurae’s secure Mobile Authentication solution. The solution embeds Futurae’s Mobile Authentication into the Scalable Capital mobile app. The benefits include prevention of large scale SMS based attack on the user base, decreased costs, and a partnership with a reliable European vendor ensuring compliance with local regulation.
“SMS authentication continues to be one of the most insecure authentication methods that is surprisingly still accepted by regulators. Especially in domains with personal and sensitive information, such as the health sector or financial services industry.” - Dr. Nikos Karapanos, CTO at Futurae Technologies
These sectors are expected to uphold the highest level of security, yet companies continue to implement SMS authentication and bear the costs as a result.
The cybersecurity industry collectively recognizes that SMS as a second-factor authentication is a poor and insecure approach to security. Institutions such as the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have advised against SMS code authentication in numerous publications. In short, SMS fraud can be categorized into local attacks, attacks via mobile phone providers, and attacks via your own smartphone. Since SMS works through mobile networks, they can be easily intercepted by the attacker, often without the victim realizing in time. You can read more about SMS attacks in this blog post.
Lower costs and higher compliance
“We are thrilled to instantly see a significant decrease in costs not only for every SMS sent, but also for first level support, like when SMS failed to deliver. We now have more time to focus on our end-product while Futurae takes care of security, reliability, and consistency for our users.”
-Andreas Schranzhofer, CTO at Scalable Capital
The increased security of Futurae’s Mobile Authentication solution supports cost cutting for revenue loss due to user friction. In addition, it supports Scalable in more actively preventing regulatory penalties that are traditionally linked to SMS fraud cases.
As Scalable works with partners, such as OSKAR, through Whitelabel applications, Futurae helps with scalability advantages. The Futurae Mobile Authentication solution allows Scalable to extend the authentication solution to partners, never worrying about the limitations of secure authentication.
Thanks to the attractive and flexible monthly per-user pricing, Scalable implements Futurae solutions with ease of mind. By paying only for what is actively used, Scalable can focus on their product knowing that the friendly and reliable Futurae team stands behind them.
A perpetual partnership
Today, Scalable can focus on their main mission for digital assets management. Meanwhile, their users enjoy seamless authentication as Futurae takes care of all security and scalability matters. With a strong backend and systems engineering team, Futurae ensures a smooth operation day and night as users login from all over the world.
