Entrust Inc. hopes to lower that barrier with a new one-time password (OTP) hardware token introduced this week. At US$5, it's less than half the price of similar tokens from rival vendors such as Vasco Data Security and RSA, EMC Corp.'s security division.

Entrust's so-called time-synchronous tokens allow users to authenticate themselves to a network or application using a one-time password that is generated every few seconds by the device. Such tokens have been used for authentication purposes for years now by banks, government agencies and others.

What makes Entrust's entry into the market interesting is that US$5 cost, analysts said. "The price is significantly less" than similar tokens from other vendors," said Paul Stamp, an analyst at Cambridge, Mass.-based Forrester Research Inc. At very high volumes, the difference between its price and that charged by other vendors may be somewhat less because of volume discounts. But even with that, Entrust's price is "extremely competitive," he said.

"From a security perspective hardware tokens are very good and viewed as being stronger," than several other approaches, including cookie and location-based authentication, Stamp said.

Ant Allan, an analyst at Stamford, Conn.-based Gartner Inc., said that the new Entrust tokens are likely to be a more attractive option for organizations that might have been considering other authentication technologies because of cost considerations. "At this price, Entrust's tokens are starting to compete" with the other approaches, he said.