Using IBM Tivoli Access Manager for Enterprise Single Sign On to Secure your Passwords

A sticky note on your monitor is a good way to remember to bring home a gallon of milk to stay out of the doghouse with your spouse. A sticky note hidden around your desk with all your passwords is a good way to end up in the doghouse with your company’s IT security group!

Let’s face it; it’s hard to remember the passwords for every application we have to use at work. It’s even more challenging when the interval to change passwords is different for every application. Hmmm is my email password myusualpassword12, myusualpassword13 or myusualpassword14?

It’s natural to want an easy way to keep track of them. This leads to insecure things such as using your dog’s name, much easier than remembering X1nP4!e. It’s also easy for someone that knows you to socially engineer that password. Writing the complex password down is easy too. Again simple for someone to flip the keyboard to that sticky note and gain access to your accounts.

So what’s a good employee to do? Well, that’s where Pathmaker Group can help. Enterprise Single Sign On (ESSO) software seamlessly captures the user ID and password for all a user’s enterprise applications and stores them in a secure, encrypted wallet. When the user next accesses their application, the user ID and password are automatically injected into the application and the login button clicked. What about when the application asks me to change my password? No problem, ESSO will capture that password change and update the secure wallet. The next time the user logs in it will use the new password.

It’s also a benefit to users in a shared workstation environment. If multiple users share a machine, when a new user comes to the machine you don’t want them to see the past user’s open applications. ESSO can gracefully log out the prior user before unlocking the machine for a new user. This is especially useful in settings such as hospitals where HIPAA regulations require that users only see data they have access rights to.

So give Pathmaker a call today and you too can be on the road to a secure password environment. Oh and don’t forget your anniversary is coming up, that’s what that sticky note is for!