The Authentication Appliance is an on-premise multi-factor authentication solution that provides network access control through PKI-based security with hardware-level protection on mobile devices. The appliance supports authentication via electronic signatures, fingerprint, geolocation, and optional PINs, and integrates with existing user directories such as Active Directory. It functions as a RADIUS proxy, forwarding authentication requests to existing RADIUS servers while adding Notakey-based verification without requiring changes to underlying VPN infrastructure. The appliance also provides Single Sign-On (SSO) supporting SAML and OAuth, extensible plugins for cloud and local service integration, and can be deployed as a virtual machine on Ubuntu, as a RancherOS-based virtual machine, or as a cloud-hosted appliance with a free license for up to ten users.
The appliance operates as a self-contained environment with redundancy, load balancing, and zero-downtime rolling updates, configurable as a single node or multi-node cluster with role-based replication, VRRP for virtual IP failover, and a reverse proxy handling TLS termination and ACME certificate management. Management is performed through the ntk command-line interface for networking, cluster membership, service settings, and backup/restore operations, while the Notakey Authentication Server provides a web-based platform with a RESTful HTTP API supporting OAuth 2.0 client-credentials authentication. The API enables integration with third-party software and the Authenticator mobile application, providing endpoints for service queries, user and device management, authentication request creation and monitoring, notifications, and key registration and retrieval. The platform supports multiple security levels for key protection, mobile device onboarding, deeplinking to the mobile app via custom URI schemes, health monitoring, and records authentication request details including timestamps, response payloads, and optional biometric checks. Supported hardware ranges from 4 GB RAM, 2 vCPU, and 32 GB storage for deployments under 1,000 users to 8 GB RAM, 8 vCPU, and 256 GB storage for installations up to 300,000 users, with compatibility for Hyper-V, VMware ESXi, and Oracle VirtualBox, and licensing offered in Express and Enterprise models.
