Day One Employee Productivity and Increased Security: Integrated Provisioning and SSO
Integrated Provisioning and SSO from Courion and Imprivata
Introduction
The pressure to increase productivity – among end-users and IT administrators alike – is an ongoing challenge for companies of all sizes. The abundance of on-line information and enterprise applications available to employees today ultimately improves productivity, potentially providing a competitive advantage in the market. But facilitating fast and secure access to that information is a complex and daunting task, often accompanied by specific government mandates. And every moment an employee is idle costs your company money and diminishes the enthusiasm of a new employee.
Integrated Provisioning and SSO makes your organization productive, efficient and secure
• Seamless end-user access to applications, from day one
• Simplified administration for fast provisioning and deprovisioning
Now there is an integrated provisioning/SSO solution • Tight enterprise security that automatically provides immediate and secure access to applications and networks, from the moment an employee begins working at your company, enabling • Simplified compliance with full productivity from day one. The linking of initial government regulations account provisioning with the generation and ongoing management of user credentials in a seamless manner delivers a complete user access solution that immediately boosts user productivity and ensures greater overall security. And of equal importance, this linking provides the ability to efficiently revoke access the moment the employee resigns or is terminated. In most industries, the provisioning and deprovisioning of application access is no longer just a capability that provides a competitive advantage, it has become an important mandate.
Make Employees Productive Right from the Start
An integrated provisioning and SSO system gives employees instant, seamless access to applications without worrying about multiple passwords. With this streamlined approach, the end user simply logs on once to his network domain and upon launching an application, all of his SSO-enabled applications – whether client/server, Web, Terminal Emulator (TE) or legacy - are automatically signed on and immediately available. There is no time lag between provisioning and SSO, and productivity issues associated with forgotten passwords are minimized. All of the security takes place behind the scenes - user accounts and application privileges are automatically created with strong application-specific passwords that fortify security without requiring users to remember numerous complex passwords.
Copyright ®2007 Imprivata, Inc.
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Integrated Provisioning and SSO from Courion and Imprivata
Simplified Administration
With integrated provisioning and SSO, enrollment and administration is easy for users and administrators.
• • • • • New user accounts are automatically created, as well as initial passwords for each application. IT generates one username and password for the user to logon to his computer First time users are auto-enrolled to single sign-on and able to gain access to all applications. Ongoing change management for users and accounts is completely automated. User provisioning with automated bulk password change for all accounts auto-enrolls existing users.
The cost of password-related problems increases as the IT environment becomes more complex, the number of applications in use increases, and the number of users increase. An integrated provisioning/SSO solution that has the ability to replace multiple passwords and application logon events with a single, centrally-managed user logon reduces these existing costs in several ways, primarily by boosting user productivity and reducing the number of costly, forgotten passwordrelated help desk calls.
The AccountCourier® OneSign® Connector: Here is how it works.
AccountCourier’s self-service portal with built-in approval workflow lets non-IT administrators provision application accounts. With AccountCourier’s Imprivata OneSign Connector, users and application credentials are automatically provisioned within the OneSign appliance. Once the user has logged on, the OneSign Agent automatically downloads access policies and application credentials from the OneSign Appliance providing “Day One” single sign-on: • Users never have to be given starting application passwords to individual applications, increasing application security. • Users don’t have to search through emails looking for passwords, increasing productivity and eliminating password-related help desk calls. • Single sign-on credentials are guaranteed to always be in sync with application credentials.
Copyright ®2007 Imprivata, Inc.
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Integrated Provisioning and SSO from Courion and Imprivata
Tighten Enterprise Security
The combined solution provides the ability to change password constraints (minimum/maximum length, reset intervals, auto resets), manage authentication challenges, and accommodate application-generated password reset requests automatically. Another powerful feature of an integrated system is the ability to assign authentication and desktop policies to specific computers, essentially over-riding user-level settings. This gives IT greater flexibility over assigning policies, allowing organizations to make exceptions to the rule when necessary. The combination of two factor authentication and SSO ensures greater network security and user convenience without increasing help desk calls due to forgotten cards, badges or tokens.
Simplify Compliance with Government Regulations
The need to adhere to strict mandates — Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), Sarbanes-Oxley, GLBA, HSPD-12, FIPS 201, and Basel II — from government and industry regulators requires that companies take significant steps to strengthen security. As a result, corporations have implemented user access and data security policies to meet these mandates and mitigate risk. Often these policies can interrupt the workflow for employees, consultants and/or temporary workers. Simplifying that workflow and increasing productivity by providing quick and easy initial access to applications employees need then becomes a burden on IT. And once employees are on-line and fully functioning, IT must also ensure there is nothing to cause ongoing loss of productivity. As well, IT needs to contain costs associated with password related calls to the help desk while ensuring compliance with policies and regulations. This integrated SSO/provisioning solution addresses complicated policies in an efficient and affordable way, by eliminating insecure password delivery practices, and enabling implementation of stronger password composition policy (stronger passwords and more frequent expiration/refresh) without burdening the end user.
Compliance Issues Include
• Enterprise-wide adherence to a strong password policy, minimizing unauthorized access to critical applications and databases • Set compliance levels for policies with strong authentication to control which users can access which applications • Self-audit the policy compliance process with full reporting capabilities to monitor user behavior
Organizations face a wide variety of challenges in trying to comply, including complex IT environments, complex legacy applications, overburdened IT departments, cost, time and user cooperation. The best solution is one that mitigates these challenges by adapting to the unique environment of that particular company and industry. This solution incorporates these requirements in a variety of ways, including automating passwords, creating accurate audit trails, enforcing stronger authentication and protecting against anticipated threats and unauthorized access to records.
Copyright ®2007 Imprivata, Inc.
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Integrated Provisioning and SSO from Courion and Imprivata
What Does the Future Hold for Integrated SSO and Provisioning?
Faced with the increasing pressure for cost-efficient administration and productive work environments, and an array of government regulations, organizations continue to demand tightly integrated user Provisioning/SSO solutions that are affordable, easy to deploy and maintain, and highly secure. The need to reduce the cost and complexity of authentication and identity management in heterogeneous IT environments also contributes to the proliferation of integrated SSO and provisioning systems as companies strive to improve user efficiency, increase security, simplify administrative management and maximize ROI.
H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center and Research Institute
The H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center and Research Institute, the third largest cancer facility in the country, has made a lasting commitment to the prevention and cure of cancer, working tirelessly in the areas of patient care, research and education to advance one step further in fighting this disease. With thousands of shared workstations and disparate systems meeting hundreds of different needs within the organization, the Moffitt Cancer Center is taking advantage of the AccountCourier OneSign Connector to strengthen its crossorganization security while ensuring employee productivity. “This integrated solution will be instrumental in our organization’s security infrastructure,” said Edward Martinez, VP & Chief Information Officer at Moffitt Cancer Center. “The flexibility of the appliance and the openness of the system allows us to cost-effectively integrate access and authentication management— and enables us to do so without replacing the process our employees are comfortable with and use everyday.” Edward Martinez has worked in the field of Information Technology for more than 20 years, nearly two-thirds of that time in the healthcare industry. Mr. Martinez has been prominently involved in driving and developing large-scale, high-speed integrated healthcare networks and building the administrative teams that support such initiatives. Mr. Martinez has helped develop national healthcare IT standards and raised industry awareness about real-time business issues surrounding data collaboration in the healthcare setting. He was recently awarded ITFlorida’s prestigious 2005 IT Leader of the Year Award, which recognizes individuals who have made significant achievements within Florida’s IT industry by establishing themselves as distinguished leaders who have a direct impact on the growth and viability of Florida’s IT sector.
Copyright ®2007 Imprivata, Inc.
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