Authentication Solutions - By Industry

Energy

Challenge

Energy industry organizations are concerned with physical security and operations, especially penetration of their perimeter because it is controlled by software.  Unauthorized intruders who gain control of critical systems can create havoc with ramifications for human health and safety and environmental integrity.  Therefore, authentication and password security is probably of greater importance in this industry than in others and it is chief among all authentication-related issues.  The problems many of these customers encounter with managing passwords for multiple enterprise applications, particularly the Lotus Notes ID password, have amplified their password security concerns.  And, as with all customers, reducing Help Desk calls is paramount to ensuring resources are devoted to the more critical security issues that need to be addressed.    

Solution

PistolStar’s Password Power and PortalGuard enable end-users to employ their Active Directory password for accessing numerous enterprise applications, such as Lotus Domino and Notes, IBM WebSphere and System i, SAP and Oracle.  The integration of the Kerberos authentication protocol adds a layer of security because the end-user and the server to which they want to gain access are mutually authenticated.  Kerberos also does not send any passwords over the network.

With Active Directory as the central authentication point, end-users have one password they need to remember to access multiple applications, which greatly decreases the incidence of forgotten passwords and dramatically reduces calls to the Help Desk for password resets.  IT staff is able to centralize password management, reducing the number of password stores and user accounts they need to oversee, and streamlining and unifying password policies.  Accordingly, they free up time they need to devote to more urgent IT security matters.

PortalGuard also provides functionality that enables administrators to meet or exceed their security objectives.  Administrators can implement best practices for ensuring stronger and consistently secure authentication such as requiring a username, password and challenge question response to gain access and multiple challenge questions for self-service password reset and recovery.  Password rules can be established by person, group or hierarchy and enable/disable certain password behaviors.  For example, administrators can configure the number of password strike-outs allowed for each user and receive an alert when a strike count is exceeded.  They also have the ability to:

• Prevent multiple users from logging in with the same credentials;
• Set password expiration intervals;
• Select a grace period for expired passwords;
• Lock out inactive users;
• Restricts the frequency with which a previously-used password can be re-used; and
• Validate password strength during login.

Administrators can also control password quality by configuring 12 fully customizable password strength rules.