Lincoln City Council migrates its authentication system to SecurAccess

(17/12/2009)

The Lincoln City Council has nine remote offices, with over 600 members of staff. The Council is responsible for local planning, building control, roads and council housing. With over 80,000 residents in Lincoln, the Council has to handle a vast amount of confidential information. Data security is always a concern – authenticated access must be easy to use, reliable and above all secure.

Two-factor authentication is not a new concept but it has been troubled by ongoing difficulties with system integration and users lacking confidence when using the product. City of Lincoln Council already had an existing two-factor authentication system, which required the use of hardware tokens. The Council was looking to reduce the cost of its managed token provider as the contract with them was ending. SecurEnvoy was just in time to help the Council migrate its authentication system.

“We required a cost effective, secure, reliable and flexible solution providing two-factor authentication for remote access,” said Dave Wormall, Principal IT officer at the Council. “We evaluated three products, including our existing supplier, during the selection process. SecurEnvoy’s cost effectiveness, ‘In Case of Emergency’ (ICE) services and reliability came through as the primary choice.”

The two-factor authentication technology from SecurEnvoy, SecurAccess transforms any mobile phone into a makeshift authentication device. This eco-friendly solution is cost-effective because there is no need to purchase additional hardware.

“We had less than a month before our tokens needed replacing and were concerned that we wouldn’t have time to migrate to a new solution,” said Wormall.

SecurEnvoy’s Deployment Wizard configured multiple accounts for the authentication switch to take place. With a single click, multiple users were migrated quickly and effectively to the new SecurAccess system. The process took less than a minute.

Even though the Council operates on two different remote access solutions, one Windows-based and one Linux-based, SecurEnvoy’s solution configured both channels easily and quickly.

For SecurEnvoy, configuring the Council’s existing authentication system to SecurAccess was simple. However, convincing the Council staff that extra hardware was no longer necessary in ensuring data security was a little bit more difficult.

Some Council members and councillors feared change and were comfortable using their traditional tokens, they were initially apprehensive about a text message based solution. After using tokenless two-factor authentication they soon realised that it was just as reliable and secure with the added bonus that they no longer needed to carry yet another device.

“The City of Lincoln Council’s home and flexible working policy will ensure that SecurEnvoy’s remote access services will always be in demand,” said Wormall.

SecurEnvoy has been able to help the Council reach its goals to find a top-notch security solution at a fraction of the price of its competitors.

Related topics:  Authentication and identity management   Internet and Web security   Mobile and Wireless Security 

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