Hitachi ID Password Manager
Case Study The Challenge
Background Well known for its relational database products, Sybase offers software that stores and distributes content throughout enterprises. Sybase’s Infrastructure Platform Group (IPG) encompasses database servers, data warehousing, and business analytics; it also includes banking, payment, and trading transaction products. The company’s customers span government, financial services, health care, and telecom markets.
Sybase was a growing company with more than 7,000 employees in 79 locations worldwide. A growing IT infrastructure meant that employees had to remember many passwords, each for a different system or application. Employees responded to the password explosion by avoiding password changes and by forgetting their own passwords often -- creating a high help desk call volume. Managing employee passwords was becoming a significant problem for Sybase, with rising support costs, compromised security and lost productivity. IT management at Sybase was tasked with lowering IT support costs. An analysis of help desk call volumes showed that password resets consumed the largest potion of help desk staff time. At the same time, employees were responding to password complexity by choosing simple passwords, by writing down their passwords and by avoiding password changes. This compromised corporate security. To address these problems, Sybase had to find a password management solution that would integrate with its many existing systems and applications. “If we address all the objectives for this project, we would be successful,” stated Bruce MacDonald, IT Project Manager, Global Infrastructure at Sybase. “Tackling this issue immediately would reduce our risk in the future and allow our helpdesk to refocus their attention on strategic initiatives, rather than routine break/fix work.”
The Solution After extensive evaluation of available password management products, Sybase selected Hitachi ID Password Manager from Hitachi ID (formerly M-Tech). Hitachi ID Password Manager was the only solution to support all of Sybase’s systems, applications and other infrastructure -- tokens, help desk automation and e-mail. “We were able to control the cost of this project because we found a solution that would not require us to completely re-engineer authentication on our network,” stated MacDonald. “Hitachi ID Password Manager offered the most value for our money, as compared to other products.”