National Bank of Canada Chooses ASG-Focal Point™ to Streamline Security Processes
Industry: Banking and Financial Services
Location: Canada
A strong economic institution for more than 140 years, the National Bank of Canada is the sixth largest chartered bank in Canada, with assets in excess of $80 billion (USD), 17,000 employees, and more than 2.5 million customers.
The National Bank of Canada’s headquarters is located in Montreal. However, the bank’s network in Canada boasts 546 branches, including 454 in Quebec. The National Bank of Canada is also expanding globally, having established offices in important financial centers throughout the U.S.
The Challenge
The Canadian financial market is highly competitive, and the National
Bank of Canada faces increasing pressure from other banks and financial
institutions to improve customer service while reducing costs.
To help sustain its leadership position and strong market growth,
the bank’s
major corporate initiatives include improving efficiency and re-engineering
some of its business processes. To do this, the National Bank
of Canada needed an IT solution that would help meet some of these
objectives by driving business process change.
As part of a larger project, the National Bank of Canada decided to consolidate 19 support centers into four, a change that would greatly increase the complexity of user and password management. Without a proper solution, some users would have needed to memorize up to 60 passwords, thus greatly magnifying issues of security and operational efficiency.
The project required tight management of controlled access to a restricted number of highly privileged user accounts in several administrative centers. Without a secure, scalable, and easy-to-implement solution, this project could potentially be error-prone and tedious and could possibly result in excessive costs, lost productivity, and dangerous security and access issues. Security administrators would also be forced to repeatedly reset critical passwords and unlock user accounts, which would dramatically increase costs.
The Solution
The National Bank of Canada chose ASG-Focal
Point™ for its enterprise Single Sign-On capabilities. Before this
solution was implemented, users had to manually login with several user-IDs
and passwords in order to access various applications and systems for each
branch. ASG-Focal Point alleviates this problem by allowing users to enter
their log in information only once and then gaining access to all their necessary
systems. Internal “homegrown” software was considered as a solution for resolving this issue, as were various third-party products. However, only ASG-Focal Point proved to have the flexibility to meet the bank’s
specific requirements in this area.
ASG-Focal Point was deployed in the National Bank of Canada’s support centers, which provide business and technical assistance to all of the bank’s branches and administrative centers. ASG-Focal Point provided a scalable, comprehensive, Single Sign-On solution that was extended to thousands of workstations quickly and easily.
ASG-Focal Point is specifically designed to support mission-critical applications, providing high availability by taking full advantage of fault-tolerant servers and replication facilities from corporate databases and enterprise directories. Security is never compromised, as ASG-Focal Point uses a secure communication protocol that encrypts all sensitive information, including passwords, using the 3DES algorithm.
ASG-Focal Point can also take advantage of local credential stores, such as encrypted files and hardware tokens like smart cards and USB tokens, to support the highest level of mobility and availability. Local credential stores are automatically maintained in full synchronicity with the ASG-Focal Point servers whenever a network connection is established.
The National Bank of Canada purchased the ASG-Focal Point solution from OKIOK Data, a key strategic partner for ASG and a leader in the field of computer security. The National Bank of Canada’s history of customer satisfaction with OKIOK Data’s professional services and support team, along with the rock-solid reliability of ASG-Focal Point, helped seal the deal.
Measurable Results
By implementing the ASG solution, the National Bank of Canada was
able to meet its specific security requirements, maintain tight
control over the limited number of highly privileged user accounts,
and improve efficiency by automating logins and eliminating all
associated password reset issues.
ASG-Focal Point now enables managers and staff in four support centers to provide technical and business assistance to employees in all branches efficiently. Properly authenticated users can effortlessly access multiple systems and various applications. Since the solution has proven very stable and virtually transparent to end-users and managers, it has made security and identity management much simpler for the staff directly involved with this application, which has led to a high level of team satisfaction with the solution.
“Since ASG-Focal Point was deployed, our particular problems have all been addressed successfully. All password-related problems, including security and operational issues, have been completely eliminated with the utmost reliability. User efficiency was also greatly improved by making the login process completely transparent,” says Sylvie Labine, director, Management of Technological Risks, National Bank of Canada. “All identified business goals were met, as indicated by the high level of customer and user satisfaction with the project.”
“The Single Sign-On solution that ASG-Focal Point provides empowers the workforce as the challenges of building a cost-effective enterprise continues to grow,” said ASG Vice President of Product Management Jim Holland. “ASG-Focal Point requires only minimal management efforts related to the Single Sign-On and login automation services. The stability and flexibility of the solution enabled the bank to evolve and manage changes without having to incur additional costs and efforts related to Single Sign-On.”
