[LINK] 'Telstra deploys single sign-on for [400] staff'

[Roger Clarke]

[And people don't like it when I point to the low levels of success 
achieved with the single sign-on notion over the last, what, 20? 
years??

[I especially like the title of this particular article:
SINGLE SIGN-ON NEARS REALITY - V McCarthy - InfoWorld, 1994]

Telstra deploys single sign-on for staff
ITNews
By James Hutchinson on Jul 28, 2011 12:21 PM (4 hours ago)
http://www.itnews.com.au/News/265048,telstra-deploys-single-sign-on-for-staff.aspx

Telstra has completed roll-out of single sign-on infrastructure for 
400 staff at its global operations centre in Melbourne.

The deployment, based on IBM's TAM ESSO 8 software, involved 714 
desktop PCs at the operations centre and was estimated to yield up to 
$1.5 million in productivity savings per year.

It would automate login processes for up to 230 applications required 
by staff at the centre which oversees critical network services and 
other Telstra operations.

Surveillance staff previously signed on to at least 20 applications 
individually at the beginning of each shift. Most of those 
applications required unique passwords and often usernames.

Staff had taken to storing passwords on spreadsheets, notebooks, 
printed sheets of paper and post-it notes, among others, to remember 
individual login credentials.

"We were breaking every security IT policy," said Telstra support 
engineer, Herman Recinos.

Password resets for individual applications often took between 24 and 
48 hours for staff.

Staff had also called for the replacement of a previous attempt at 
single sign-on, TAM ESSO version 6, which often corrupted credentials 
and would not refresh any changed passwords.

Staff who hot-desked between computers and shifts were often unable 
to properly login to one or multiple computers and applications 
simultaneously.
The single sign-on capability was deployed across all desktops in the 
surveillance room of the centre "overnight", according to Recinos. It 
was used across two servers running Windows 2003 virtual machines and 
housed in separate Telstra exchanges for redundancy.

The deployment had been made relatively cleanly though IBM consultant 
Robert Trotter conceded that, at one point, the software rollout 
prompted the giant, NASA-like monitoring screen housed within the 
centre to reset.

Rival telco Optus had also recently deployed a self-service password 
management system in an attempt to reduce productivity and helpdesk 
costs by up to $300,000 per year.

James Hutchinson attended the Pulse 2011 Conference as a guest of IBM.


-- 
Roger Clarke                                 http://www.rogerclarke.com/
			            
Xamax Consultancy Pty Ltd      78 Sidaway St, Chapman ACT 2611 AUSTRALIA
                    Tel: +61 2 6288 1472, and 6288 6916
mailto:Roger.Clarke at xamax.com.au                http://www.xamax.com.au/

Visiting Professor in the Cyberspace Law & Policy Centre      Uni of NSW
Visiting Professor in Computer Science    Australian National University