SVA

Success Story

SVA implemented Novell® SecureLogin to provide single sign-on access to 15 applications for 1,400 users. With just one password to remember and rapid login to all systems, each user saves up to ten minutes of administration per day, and calls to the helpdesk have fallen by around five percent.

Overview

Sozialversicherungsanstalt der gewerblichen Wirtschaft (SVA) is the administrative body responsible for the social insurance of all self-employed workers in Austria, excluding those employed in agriculture. Based in Vienna and with 1,500 employees SVA provides pensions and health insurance schemes, automatically and compulsorily for all qualifying workers.

Challenge

SVA employees need to access up to 15 separate applications to carry out their jobs. To ensure high security for potentially sensitive information contained in these systems, the organisation had implemented password-controlled access.

Paradoxically, the difficulty of remembering up to 15 regularly changing usernames and passwords made the entire network less secure, as employees would often choose overly simple passwords or even write their passwords down next to their workstation. Where the applications themselves set conditions for passwords to ensure that they were sufficiently complex, employees would often forget them - accounting for around five percent of all calls to the IT helpdesk.

Beyond the potential risk to data security, the existing password management policies were a significant drain on productivity. Employees might spend five to ten minutes each day logging into all of their applications - in the worst-case scenario, this would represent a total loss of more than 5,000 man-days per year.

Novell solution

"We estimate that each user now spends around 90 seconds logging in each day, compared with up to ten minutes before we implemented Novell SecureLogin. Multiplied across all our users, this means that we could be saving around 4,000 man-days of productive time each year."

Adolf Koppensteiner
Head of IT
Sozialversicherungsanstalt der gewerblichen Wirtschaft

The main goals for SVA were to improve application and data security and to reduce the time taken to access applications. Working with its regular technology partner, Madras Computer, SVA selected Novell SecureLogin to support single sign-on for its users.

Novell SecureLogin provides password-controlled access to 15 applications for 1,400 users at SVA. The Novell solution creates a unique password for each user to each application, and in many cases automatically changes the passwords when they expire. The single sign-on environment encompasses the 15 core applications used by SVA, including communication tools, specialist insurance systems and SAP ERP applications.

SVA employees now only need to remember a single username and password for SecureLogin, which then automatically and securely logs them into the other applications they are registered to use. The deployment of the new software ran very smoothly, and the intuitive user interface kept training requirements to a minimum: the IT department simply sent out a single e-mail containing instructions for users.

"The implementation of Novell SecureLogin was relatively quick and simple, since there was no need to revise the existing applications in any way," said Adolf Koppensteiner, Head of IT, SVA. "We estimate that it takes about one man-day to integrate a new application into the single sign-on environment, so the solution can easily grow to meet our future needs."

Novell SecureLogin offers out-of-the-box support for smartcard, token and biometric authentication devices, so if future requirements change, SVA can add a second layer of security.

SVA also worked with Madras to upgrade its servers from NetWare® to Novell Open Enterprise Server. The main production systems are running on the NetWare kernel, and a test server is running Open Enterprise Server on the Linux* kernel.

"We saw an immediate 50 percent improvement in the utilisation of hardware resources with Novell Open Enterprise Server," said Koppensteiner. "This will allow us to keep running our existing servers longer than anticipated, reducing the total cost of ownership. Knowing that we have the ability to move key systems to Linux with Open Enterprise Server helps keep our options open for the future."

Results

"We saw an immediate 50 percent improvement in the utilisation of hardware resources with Novell Open Enterprise Server."

Adolf Koppensteiner
Head of IT
Sozialversicherungsanstalt der gewerblichen Wirtschaft

The deployment of Novell SecureLogin delivered an immediate boost to both security and efficiency. With just a single password to remember, users are no longer likely to write down login details or choose an easily guessable combination of characters. And since users are no longer required to log in separately to multiple applications, they save several minutes a day.

"We estimate that each user now spends around 90 seconds logging in each day, compared with up to ten minutes before we implemented Novell SecureLogin," said Koppensteiner. "Multiplied across all our users, this means that we could be saving around 4,000 man-days of productive time each year."

The IT helpdesk now very rarely receives calls about lost or forgotten passwords. SVA estimates that there has been a five percent drop in total call volumes since the implementation, freeing up skilled operators for other issues.

In the past, users would generally leave applications open to save time if another employee needed to use their machine. Now that Novell SecureLogin has made it quick and easy to log in, users are more likely to secure their workstations correctly by logging out.

"With Novell SecureLogin we have achieved our goals for improved security and efficiency," said Koppensteiner. "The response from both users and management has been extremely positive."