authID ABM Case Study

Seasoned CISOs understand that supporting business objectives securely and effectively is a top priority. Their second priority is to do so without frustrating users. That was the case when Stephanie Franklin-Thomas, PhD, was asked to enable more than 100,000 frontline cleaning, parking, and building maintenance workers to clock in at global client sites and access work resources. As Senior Vice President and CISO for the nearly $8 billion facilities services contractor ABM Industries, she readily accepted the challenge and focused on three priorities: make it secure, meet the business requirement, and make it easy to use.

ABM, being largely a service company—janitorial, parking and transportation, landscaping, and facilities engineering—relies on the frontline team members at these sites. Hence, secure access to their digital resources—time sheets, training, messaging, and more—is essential.

After a first pilot with usernames and passwords proved too cumbersome for users, ABM needed to find an authentication solution that wouldn’t require users to type anything. It had to work on a shared device. And it had to be multi-factor. Ultimately, they found their vendor, authID. A QR code solution with facial biometric multifactor authentication was delivered where the code is generated and the facial biometric is registered during employee onboarding. Then when the team member logs into their resources remotely, authID’s cloud-based system retrieves the worker’s biometric profile as the user looks into the phone camera for positive biometric verification. The next worker uses the same device, scans their own QR code, performs their biometric verification, and that next worker gets access to the application. Facial biometrics makes it certain that you can’t share the QR code, because the minute you scan the code, it will look for the facial biometric that’s been bound to the user account associated to that code. If it doesn’t match, it won’t grant access.

The deployment of a simple system for frontline workers who scan their QR codes on a shared Android device located at the client site, look at the camera, and capture their face and process a facial biometric authentication. The QR codes, issued at employee orientation, are printed on their badges and will not work without live facial recognition.