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Established in 1982, JAL Card, a Japan Airlines subsidiary, is Japan's leading airline credit card company and mileage club. Like its parent company, JAL Card is known for its superior customer service. JAL Card's 500 employees cater to more than 1.5 million members worldwide.

Challenge

As a credit card company, JAL Card needs to ensure that the identities of its customers and its data are secure at all times. Following a companywide audit, JAL Card realised that its identity management system was in need of an overhaul. Employees had multiple identities with different formats and often used five to eight passwords to access order entry, credit management and finance applications. Concern mounted within the JAL Card IT group that the company's fragmented identity management system could pose a serious security risk.

JAL Card also wanted to use the opportunity to address compliance issues in anticipation of new requirements. With Japanese legislators already reviewing Sarbanes-Oxley legislation in the United States, JAL Card anticipated that it was only a matter of time before similar legislation would be passed in Japan. The company wanted to be prepared.

Novell Solution

To address its need to increase security and compliance capabilities, JAL Card implemented Novell Identity Manager and Novell SecureLogin. JAL Card's long time IT partner, TIS, a consultancy with more than 30 years of systems development for credit card and financing companies, helped implement the Novell identity management solution.

"We wanted to address our identity management challenges quickly and comprehensively," said Masaaki Mine, assistant director of systems planning at JAL Card. "Novell successfully addressed our need for centralised, secure and systematic management, and also provided us with a technology platform that can serve both our current and future identity management needs."

Novell Identity Manager enabled JAL Card to simplify the process of identity management. With Novell Identity Manager, the IT staff have automated user provisioning and password management throughout the user lifecycle - delivering immediate access for new users, modifying or rescinding access as necessary across all systems, and synchronising multiple passwords into a single strong password.

With Novell Identity Manager, JAL Card reduced its user administration costs by eliminating complex manual processes and enforcing security enterprise-wide - all while delivering the right resources to users so that they can focus on better serving customers.

Novell SecureLogin provides employees with single sign-on to corporate resources and has substantially reduced helpdesk costs. Novell SecureLogin has also improved user satisfaction by dramatically reducing the amount of time required for users to log in to applications, enabling them to be more productive.

Results

Since implementing the Novell solution, JAL Card has received rave reviews from employees who no longer have to remember multiple passwords to access applications. The company reduced the number of passwords per user from eight to one, dramatically simplifying identity management across most of the company's core applications.

The Novell SecureLogin interface has dramatically simplified user administration. The IT team can easily grant application access according to user or group, and can set viewing and editing capabilities for each user.

"Single sign-on with Novell SecureLogin was instrumental to improving end-user satisfaction, "said Mine. "We've gone from having multiple identities with disparate formats to having a single user ID and password for each user. We have received positive responses from our clients and reduced the amount of time spent on administration by 50 percent."

For the complete success story, see:
http://www.novell.com/success/jal_card.html

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It was contributed by a community member and is published "as is." It seems to have worked for at least one person, and might work for you. But please be sure to test, test, test before you do anything drastic with it.