Novell Identity Manager
Password Changes Made Easy
If your users have to call the helpdesk to change their passwords, you're going to love this. Nearly 30% of helpdesk calls are password related. Analysts estimate that each time someone calls to the helpdesk, it costs anywhere from US $25 to US $50. Why not empower your users through password self-service? It keeps them from getting derailed from their work, reduces distractions, and makes everyone more efficient. Let them change their passwords and manage their identities in accordance with your business policy, and take your helpdesk out of that loop.
Normally, an employee who forgets his password must call the help desk for a password reset—eating up his own valuable time and driving up support costs. But with Novell Identity Manager you can synchronize a user's passwords to provide a single password to all systems. Users are more likely to remember a single password. Moreover, you can ensure that passwords your users set are secure: you can create and enforce strong, system-wide password policies to protect your company against password-related attacks.
When a user forgets his password, the User Application comes to the rescue. It allows him to remember, create, change and reset his own password without calling the helpdesk and taking up an IT administrator's time.
When the user visits the User Application he is given one of the following administrator-defined options:
- Password hint: The administrator decides whether the system delivers the hint immediately on the screen or by e-mail.
- Password reset with challenge and response: One or more challenge questions are displayed on screen. These can include questions originally created by the user, by the Identity Manager administrator, or a combination of both. When the user answers the questions correctly, he is permitted to change his own password. The new password is automatically checked for policy compliance, then updated and synchronized with all connected systems.
Complete Password Management
Password self-service is just one part of the overall password management solution provided by Identity Manager. Password management features fall into three categories:
- Password policy
- Password self-service
- Password synchronization
With these features, you can enforce a consistent password policy across several heterogeneous systems and thus tighten your security belt. You also minimize the number of passwords that users need to remember, thereby strengthening the security of password authentication to your network. After all, with fewer passwords, users are less likely to void the password concept by writing down (and thus advertising) their secrets.