Resilient Network Systems Inc. is adding $1.2 million to its coffers via a series A extension round led by HRK Investments LLP.

The company plans to invest the money in sales and marketing to boost awareness of its identity and access management platform, which integrates multiple authentication technologies and distributed sourcing.

“The product’s pretty well buttoned up. We just need to get the word out,” said Chief Executive Ethan Ayer.

Resilient Network Systems (not to be confused with Resilient Systems Inc., a security company acquired by IBM Corp. last year), adds an additional layer of security to existing single- or multi-factor authentication systems by connecting to external third-party sources specified by the customer. For example, a request to add a mobile telephone to an account could trigger a search of public phone records to verify that the number is established and wasn’t created for just a single use.

The company’s Resilient Access 3.0 platform, which was announced in December, has a flexible policy workflow engine that enables organizations to safeguard files, applications, documents and data with their own custom access rules. The company is particularly focused on large, security-focused enterprises in government and healthcare, Ayer said.

Multi-factor authentication on public networks has been slow, since website operators are reluctant to introduce inconvenience into the login process, but the technique is widely used behind corporate firewalls. Resilient Network Systems is betting the the many recent examples of large public network breaches will begin to shift sentiment. “There are certainly better approaches than single passwords,” Ayer said. “It’s getting to be like a sieve out there.”

The company’s chairman, Richard Spires, is the former chief information officer of the Department of Homeland Security.

Photo: Peter Kurdulija via photopin cc