Novell trades passwords for fingerprints at Los Angeles County

For 65 years the Los Angeles County Employees Retirement Association (LACERA) has been managing retirement, disability and death benefits for tens of thousands of county employees and their beneficiaries. Over the years LACERA has kept pace with the increasing demand for its services by adding new applications and management systems. Yet the addition of those systems also left LACERA with an access management dilemma, which led the association to a Novell® Nsure™ secure identity management solution.

"After an internal assessment of LACERA's network systems, we recognized the need to improve our access management policies," said James Pu, director of Technology Services for LACERA. "Virtually all of our critical applications had their own user IDs and passwords — requiring employees to log in several times each day, and forcing many of them to write down or share passwords. That created not only a serious security concern, it also made it difficult for our employees to get access to applications and information when they needed it.

"On top of all that, we also wanted to simplify network access and heighten overall security by replacing traditional passwords with fingerprint authentication," he said.

Working with General Networks, a local solution provider and Novell Platinum Partner, LACERA conducted an intense evaluation of vendors and technologies and finally selected Novell to address its secure identity management needs. Deploying an Nsure solution allowed the association to centralize identity management across all of its critical applications, such as Member Services, workflow and imaging, giving users access to those applications with a single login.

LACERA also replaced password-based logins with simpler, more secure biometric authentication. Now when employees log on, they are prompted to enter their usernames, which then initiates fingerprint authentication through a fingerprint scanner. No more passwords to remember or to forget.

By providing single sign-on to key applications and eliminating the security loopholes inherent in password-based security, LACERA is meeting its business goals. "We went from users having to remember several passwords, which had to be changed at least every thirty days, to one simple, unique fingerprint scan," Pu said. "Naturally, network security has been strengthened by eliminating those inadequate methods of password management, and we've also seen a significant drop in support overhead, because our helpdesk is no longer bombarded by password-related issues."

"LACERA's innovative deployment illustrates the dramatic difference secure identity management can make," said Dave Lawrence, Novell vice president of Nsure solutions. "Using Novell Nsure, the association has reduced a patchwork of passwords to one simple, biometric login, providing access to critical applications all across the organization. That integrated access is what Novell's vision of one Net is all about."