How to control authentication and authorizations in healthcare environments?

Active Directory is the central source for users to access applications and systems. In the context of information security, it is important to keep user accounts in the Active Directory up-to-date and accurate. As an example, this will prevent former employees from being able to access the network and systems if their user account is left active. Despite the high requirements for information security, many healthcare organizations are still manually managing user accounts on a routine basis. Information regarding new employees is being passed, typically on paper, between the hiring manager, HR department and the IT department, who, in the end, manually create accounts based on the available - and often inaccurate - information. This situation is less than optimal and can lead to risks, such as:

• A large workload for the IT department with manual and repetitive tasks;
• Long turnaround time creating user accounts and the risk of making errors during the manual copying of data (such as typos in the name of the employee);
• The risk that new employees receive the same rights as an employee in a similar function when they should not. When rights are copied there is a risk that employees receive access rights to applications and systems they really don’t require access to;
• Risk of pollution in Active Directory due to accounts of employees that have left the organization remaining active. Pollution in the Active Directory due to user accounts of former employees has a negative effect on the score of an audit and compliancy regulations.

In order for healthcare organizations to mitigate these risks, they need to take control over their authentication and authorization management. By using an automated solution for user account management, organizations can greatly optimize the processes and reduce risks. CentraState Healthcare System, a non-profit community health organization in Freehold (New Jersey) is a leader in this regard and has achieved an efficient and streamlined process for user account management.

Do more with less
Regulatory compliance, and the ever growing need of doing more with less, are reasons that CentraState continually strives to improve their internal IT processes. CentraState Healthcare System recently embarked on a project to find a secure and automated method for managing the user account lifecycle in Active Directory and Exchange. Lauro Araya, Network Administrator, stated, “When the search started, our IT-staff was managing the process manually utilizing Microsoft Active Directory Users and Computers. This was a time consuming process and we wanted to avoid this manual intervention because it led to risks and errors.”

To be able to effectively manage the user account lifecycle, CentraState Healthcare System asked Identity & Access Management vendor Tools4ever to create a connector between their HR system Lawson, and Active Directory. The process begins when pertinent information of a newly hired employee is entered into the Lawson HR system. Conversely, as employees resign, a termination date is placed in the HR system. On a scheduled basis, Tools4ever’s User Management Resource Administrator application executes a query to capture all employee data and begins the process of updating Active Directory. If the account already exists in AD, any updates, such as name, location or department changes are appropriately processed.

If the account does not exist, it is created along with an Exchange mailbox, home directory and assigned to the appropriate Group Profiles based on job title and department. If the employee start date is in the future, the account is created but put in a disabled state until that date is reached and then it is activated.  When an employee termination occurs, the information is processed by the software and accounts are immediately disabled and then deleted after a specific period of time has passed.

Tools4ever made several customizations to suit the special needs of CentraState, such as the naming conventions for Active Directory and Exchange mailboxes. Business logic was also defined within the product to allow the automatic placement of users into the correct OU based upon their specific location and department. This information is also utilized to insure mailboxes are created within the proper mail server. Information that is created during the Active Directory process, such as user account name and e-mail address, is fed back to the Lawson database twice a day. This is done to insure that Lawson has accurate information whenever anything changes in Active Directory.

Compliance with industry standard regulations
Approximately two weeks after commencement, the entire project was implemented and operational. The reduction in time spent by the staff managing the user account lifecycle was tremendous. Commenting on the project, Mark Handerhan, IT Manager, stated, “This implementation was one of the most highly valuable, cost effective solutions that I’ve ever implemented. We have taken the manual intervention out of the equation for many mundane AD /user tasks, such as disabling network accounts. User accounts are now disabled in real-time once terminated in Lawson. I believe efficiency is the best seller here.”

Mark Handerhan continues: “Besides the time reduction, the implementation provides us with a greater level of network security, while also assuring compliance with industry standard regulations such as HIPAA.” In summary, the IT staff at CentraState can spend more time on mission critical support and planning while eliminating the requirements to spend time on routine user account tasks.

For more information, please visit our website.

Allow the helpdesk focus on more important issues than simple password resets

Using a username and password to log on to applications and systems is a common method of authentication. Various laws and regulations in the healthcare industry require that access security is tightened and that passwords meet certain complexity requirements such as minimum length, use of special characters, use of an uppercase letter, etc. In addition, a frequent requirement is for passwords to be changed after a certain period of time has elapsed. With the introduction of complex passwords, it is often difficult for employees to remember their Active Directory password, especially after a vacation. This leads to a significant increase in the number of password reset calls to the helpdesk.
On average, 25% of the calls to a helpdesk are estimated to be password-related, such as resetting forgotten passwords. The IT staff is burdened with resolving these calls, resulting in an increased administrative load for the IT department. At the same moment, the end-user also loses productive time because he or she is locked out of the network temporarily. Wouldn’t it be great if the IT department was less burdened with their duties and could focus on resolving more critical calls?

Improvement of password management
South County Hospital, a 100 bed, 1,200 employee acute care hospital located in Wakefield, Rhode Island, was facing this exact problem. The hospital’s helpdesk was averaging between 20 to 25 password resets a month, each requiring about half an hour to complete due to the arduous process of receiving the call, placing a work order, resetting the password and then contacting the users, most of whom are busy clinicians.

With a focus on lean management, and an effort to make processes as efficient as possible, the hospital began to look for ways to improve password management and reduce the number of support calls to the helpdesk. By improving this process, the hospital also wanted to enhance the user’s experience so users did not have to wait on the process and could easily reset their own passwords to get on with their jobs.

When looking for a vendor with a solution to their password management issues, Tools4ever was a front runner as South County had previous experience utilizing another of their products, RealLastLogon. Tools4ever’s Self Service Reset Password Manager (SSRPM) was able to resolve all of the password reset issues in their environment and integrate with their Outlook web access page, a top priority at the hospital. SSRPM was also capable of integrating with Meditech, the hospital information system, to synchronize the password resets.

Self service password reset
With SSRPM, users can always reset their password and will no longer depend on the operating hours of the service desk or helpdesk. Before resetting the password, it is critical that users identify themselves by answering a few personal challenge questions. This is safer than the current method where it is possible for the user to call the helpdesk and can claim to be someone else. On the Windows login screen a new button is added, "Forgot My Password" which the end user can click if the password is forgotten. By answering a challenge questions such as, "What is my mother’s maiden name?” the user can identify themself and securely reset their password.

The helpdesk can also directly ask personal questions to identify a caller. The helpdesk employee does not see the full answers but, for example only the second and last character of the answer to positively identify the caller.

When entering the new password the end user is required to comply with the password complexity requirements of the organization. While entering the password the complexity rules that are met are flagged with a green check. For example: "Minimum password length of 10 characters: OK". There are no longer the cryptic error messages.

Besides the possibility of identifying the user by answering personal questions, Advanced Authentication is also possible, via enhanced authentication including email and SMS authentication. This means in addition to  the regular questions that need to be answered,  there is an an additional question of  "What is the PIN code you just received on your cell phone?". This form of authentication is referred to as two-factor authentication; something you know (answers) and something you have such as a mobile phone.

Easily customize and integrate with systems
South County implemented SSRPM in their environment and were able to integrate the solution with all of the applications at the hospital. SSRPM is set up to work with three different technologies at the hospital; Outlook Web Access for email, the standard Windows credential provider when logging onto to the computer, as well as web access for people working outside the network. The hospital was also able to modify the security questions which users would be asked when resetting their passwords. “The ability to choose questions that have an answer that only the user would know, yet are easy to remember, is important”, said Ken Hedglen, Information Technology Manager at South County Hospital.

With SSRPM, South County’s users no longer need to spend precious time contacting the helpdesk and waiting for a reply to their password reset request. They are now able to answer a series of security questions and quickly reset their own password. The hospital liked that they did not need to provide any training on the product due to it being self-explanatory. “Any system that we implement that we don’t hear anything about after the fact is good, because no news is good news when it comes to systems” said Hedglen. SSRPM has also been beneficial to the helpdesk as they can handle other types of work orders. “The helpdesk can now focus on more important issues rather than simple password resets and are much more productive.”


For more information on Tools4ever solutions, please visit our website.

User and access management in Cloud applications – a challenge

It appears that ‘the cloud’ continues to expand within the commercial world. Google Apps, Salesforce.com, GoToMeeting, Office 365, itslearning, etc. are all being widely deployed. Controlling who has access to specific applications and corresponding data is even more complicated with cloud applications. Providers of cloud solutions confer little priority to developing better management of user accounts and access rights in their applications. Consequently, user and access management in cloud applications entails a number of challenges:  

1. Federation is not a replacement for provisioning - Working with cloud applications means more authentication sources; Active Directory in one’s own corporate network and one or more authentication sources, for example AD, LDAP directory or database in the cloud. There are only a few possibilities for synchronizing user accounts between both authentication sources, (like AD Federation Services from Microsoft and the SAML standard. In this manner, end-users can log in transparently to the cloud applications. However, federation is not a replacement for provisioning and basic user account management.
2. Too many manual actions - Providers who do not support federation frequently offer a web-browser that managers can use to control access to the cloud application directly. This necessitates a sequence of manual operations and is time-consuming and error-prone. Also, when it’s possible to import a basic CSV file into the cloud application, it still requires manual intervention by the application manager. 
3. Different conventions for naming and passwords  - Conventions governing naming standards and passwords are often inconsistent between network and cloud applications. In the network, a user ID might be based on the log-in name, and in the cloud it might be the e-mail address. This complicates exchanging user account details between the environments, and many times, differences also apply to password conventions. When extremely complex passwords are required in the corporate network, cloud applications might not be able to handle this type of password. The possibility also exists that the cloud application requires a different duration for password expiration than within the corporate network. 
4. Missing organizational structure  - The reporting hierarchy structure within an organization is often utilized to assign authorizations to employees based on their role or position, commonly referred to as Role Based Access Control (RBAC). Within the corporate network this structure is contained in an HR system or within Active Directory. Cloud applications normally cannot translate this organizational structure, and the web based provisioning functionality they offer does not offer a robust method for incorporating this level of detail. Naturally, it is possible to transfer the entire organizational structure to the cloud application, but this requires an enormous volume of management activity when something in the hierarchy changes. 
5. What if the connection drops? - Providers who offer links between the network and cloud applications often use event-based synchronization between the systems. However, they do not have a procedure in place to deal with a temporary drop in the connection. Cloud applications do not provide any guarantee or notification that synchronization completed successfully.
6. Reject bulk actions - Performing bulk actions in cloud applications is occasionally rejected by the application. Some cloud applications which impose restrictions on the number of actions that can be carried out in one pass, or require that no management activities are undertaken during working hours to prevent overloads on their network.

Working with cloud applications generally means that organizations no longer have user and access management in their own hands, and that the rules and SLAs of the cloud applications apply. User and access management are of secondary importance to business requirements. If it is requisite for your organization to have control of user and access management, Tools4ever can help you.

Tools4ever acknowledged that the migration of applications to the cloud would bring new challenges in the field of user and account management. With this in mind, Tools4ever developed links (connectors) that offer the following functionality:

• Password synchronization. If a password is changed in Active Directory, this change will be automatically implemented (synchronized) in the cloud application;
• Auto provisioning of user accounts linked to UMRA's proprietary user account management process, ensures synchronization of user accounts for employees through the HR system, as well as any changes made by the helpdesk, managers and even end users. User accounts are created, modified, enabled, disabled and removed etc. in a completely automated way;
•  Integrated access management from the end users to the cloud application. Accesses to various components of the cloud application are assigned/revoked on the basis of the end user's organizational role. UMRA features an advanced RBAC module that controls access to the cloud application on the basis of the department/job title in the HR system, as well as the choices that managers have made for their employees;
• A centralized dashboard that provides IT managers with an overview of the cloud applications deployed by each user. The dashboard can be used to control the license costs as well as for logging and reporting purposes;
• Single Sign On for all cloud and web applications based on existing Active Directory credentials. This means that users are no longer required to remember a host of user names and passwords.

For additional information or to download one of our solutions , please visit our website. 

Customer Satisfaction and Password Resets

Two recent customers of Tools4ever, a bank and a car dealership, brought to light a new value proposition of our password management solutions that I had not previously thought of.  In both cases, these clients have a great number of employees that spend the majority of their time interacting with clients.  Can you imagine a client’s frustration if a bank teller needed to wait on hold for 10-15 minutes to get the helpdesk online to reset a password? Worse yet, what if it was a Saturday and the helpdesk was unavailable, how much productivity would be lost?

Both of these organizations turned to Tools4ever for assistance. In the case of the bank, they were receiving 3-5 calls per day for password resets. By implementing Self Service Reset Password Manager (SSRPM) and Enterprise Single Sign On Manager (ESSOM), they were able to drive that number to virtually zero calls.  ESSOM reduces the number of credentials a user needs to remember down to one and SSRPM allows self-service should the employee forget that set. 

The auto dealership had an SSO solution that was being phased out by the vendor and support was coming to an end.  They knew the calls to the helpdesk would increase dramatically as users would go from 1 set of credentials to needing to remember between 5 and 10. Implementing the Tools4ever ESSOM solution fit the bill. All of their dealer and financial applications were easily accommodated. Taking it one step further, all employees were “pre-enrolled” into ESSOM. Their user names and password were entered into the database and encrypted. This means the end user never even are made aware of what their credentials are for the various applications. If some leaves, shutting off their ESSOM profile prevents access into any application.

I am always amazed at the new ways our customers find to utilize our products to increase productivity and, in this case, help insure their customers have a more positive experience.  For more information, please visit our website.

Password Synch versus Single Sign On

In many implementations of our Self Service Reset Password Manager (SSRPM), a client will request that we send the new password to several other applications.  On the surface, this seems like a simple request and a function that our product is certainly capable of providing. Once you delve deeper there are a number of mitigating factors that need to be considered:

• Are user names the same across all systems? If yes, implementing is easy. If no, a translation table will need to be built up to make sure JDOE in system 1 is equal to John_Doe in system 2 and DOEJ in system 3 and so on.
• Are password complexity rules the same in all systems? If yes, implementing is easy. If no, the most complex password requirement now becomes the defacto standard. Special character restrictions can also become an issue.
• What happens if System B is unavailable when the synch occurs? A password storage vault and error handling need to implemented to insure a reset can occur when the system becomes available. 
• While SSPRM addresses forgotten passwords, how do we handle capture password changes and synch them?

While Tools4ever has the products (PSM and PCM) and expertise to address these issues, there needs to be a determination of feasibility and reliability. This determination directly corresponds to the number of systems that need to be synched. Sending password resets to 2 or 3 systems, in addition to Active Directory is a complex requirements but entirely feasible. 

When the number of systems expands much beyond that, the recommendation would be to lean towards a Single Sign On (SSO) solution that eliminates all of the issues above.  SSO can capture and cache all credentials for any number of systems making the synch unnecessary. All users need to remember is one set of credential; their AD username and password. SSO can handle password resets automatically for all systems and complexity rules are a non-issue as they are addressed at the application level.

For more information, please visit our website.

Workflow and Identity Management

One topic we seem to running across with increased regularity is employees starting work before they are actually entered into the HR system. When this occurs, completely automating the user account creation breaks down. The employee will need access to the network, email and applications on their first day but HR can have a lag of a few days to a few weeks before all information is compiled, approved and entered into the HR system.

To resolve this issue, we have several creative methods to insure the employee has what he or she needs to be productive on Day 1. In at one recent customer install, we implemented Web forms to allow a hiring manager to start the user account lifecycle process. Basic information, such as name, department and title are entered into the web form. From there an automated workflow process takes over and routes system access request to the appropriate individuals.  As approvals are granted, the system automatically creates the accounts in Active Directory, Office 365 and several other systems based on the user requirements. This process insures the new employee has what they need on their first day of work.

Once the automated process detects the user is added to the HR system, a synching process occurs and adds other relevant information to the Active Directory such as employee number, address, office location and cell number. The automated process also detects changes in employee status such as departmental transfers and takes appropriate actions to re-provision access as appropriate. The HR system also feeds termination dates to the User Management application to insure access is disabled. The HR team and managers also have a web form where they can mark an employee terminated immediately insuring that access to the network is revoked instantaneously.
To learn more about utilizing the Tools4ever User Management solution to delegate account creation responsibilities, please visit our website.

Who is it?

The majority of calls received by the IT helpdesk require caller verification. After all, the helpdesk agent will want to be certain the caller is who they claim to be before granting access privileges to sensitive business applications. But how can helpdesk agents determine the identity of end users?

Many organizations require a physical form of identification in order for the helpdesk to make changes. For instance, employees will be asked to provide a document signed by their manager or a copy of their identification before being assigned any privileges. On the other hand, faster approaches, such as a simple call to the helpdesk, often involve too many risks.

In response to these challenges, Tools4ever has developed Helpdesk Caller ID Verification. This solution offers a simple mechanism for determining a caller’s identity. To this end, the caller will first be prompted to provide answers to a series of personal questions, such as “What is your mother’s maiden name?” Thanks to the use of an intelligent technique, the helpdesk agent will not see the answer to the question, but only parts of the answer (e.g. the first and last characters). The helpdesk agent will subsequently ask the caller which characters have to be entered.

Helpdesk Caller ID Verification does not require any additional hardware, making it a cost-efficient, easy to implement solution. This means organizations can easily verify the identity of callers in a secure fashion.

For more information, please visit our Website.