Winchester City Council
Profile• Provides public services
to110000 citizens.
• Covers Winchester cityand neighbouring area.
Users• Two main office sites within
the town.
• Tens of applications forresident services.
Challenges• Simplify access to services
administration.
• Comply with CoCo aheadof schedule.
• Secure access to data andapplications.
Results• Council staff access data
quickly and easily.
• Help-desk load reduced.
• Helped achieve CoCocompliance.

City council ensures CoCo compliance and simplifies IT access.
Meeting GSi security standards
Winchester City Council provides a range of services including housing, council tax, benefits
environmental, and business services to its residents. With access to a large amount ofconfidential citizen and government data, the Council places great emphasis on data security
Following the introduction of the Government’s GSi Code of Connection (CoCo) policy, whichlists the security standards that organisations must meet in order to connect and remain
connected to the Government Secure Intranet (GSi) in early 2009, the Council wanted toensure it was compliant with CoCo requirements ahead of the policy deadline.
To develop the necessary trust and confidence within the public sector communities andbetween Government and the citizens, a common approach to risk management and theimplementation of an information assurance framework became increasingly important.
The aim of the Code of Connection (CoCo) is to develop the trust required both within andbetween communities, which then allows more effective use of shared systems and services.
CoCo provides a set of security standards that organisations must adhere to when joining theGSi.
With its staff needing access to multiple applications per day, Winchester City Council saw thathaving to remember and manage complex passwords for each application was placing
a burden on its staff and IT support team.
The Council therefore decided to look for a cost-effective, flexible and easy-to-use solution
which would simplify the login process for staff, reducing the problem of forgotten passwords,
whilst increasing security.

Enterprise SSO increases security and cuts support calls
Winchester City Council opted for Enterprise SSO, a single sign-on software solution fromleader in identity and access management Evidian, to increase login security, improve staff
efficiency and cut IT support calls.
The Evidian Enterprise SSO solution, which is being used together with two- factor
authentication to secure systems and application access, was implemented as it met theCouncil’s key requirements for security and flexibility, a core part of the Council’s compliancewith the GSi CoCo.
The solution enables authorised staff to log in to multiple applications with a single user ID andpassword instead of having to log in to each application individually.

Case study > Local Government

www.evidian.com

Using Evidian Enterprise SSO within the Council
Council staff use the Evidian solution when signing into a range of back-office and citizen dataapplications. Evidian Enterprise SSO enforces security policies by clearly linking application
access to user identities, and by enforcing the use of strong, complex passwords.
Evidian Enterprise SSO secures access to all types of corporate application – whether
Windows, Citrix, Linux, Unix, web-based or mainframe. It combines multi-factor authentication
with a plug-and-play SSO solution, replacing user passwords with digital signatures based on
certificates, smart cards, USB keys, or biometrics. Access is authorised according to existing
security policies and enterprise directories.
« Evidian’s SSO solution
exceeds the CoCo requirementsfor password strength, andsaves users’ time…It gives us asingle, consistent security policythat is easy to apply, withminimal support overhead. »« We wanted to ensure wewere compliant with CoCoahead of the Government’s
original deadline. Evidian’s
SSO solution exceeds theCoCo requirements forpassword strength, and saves
users’ time by negating theneed to sign in to multiple
applications. It also cuts thenumber of helpdesk calls fromusers for resets of forgotten
passwords. It gives us a single,
consistent security policy that’seasy to apply, with minimal
support overhead. »Sheila Davidge,Head of IM&T,
Winchester City Council.

Evidian Enterprise SSO also encourages a greater level of compliance as it creates a central
audit trail; this helps minimise potential security breaches. The solution records all user accessactivities and thus enables further immediate analysis if needed.
The Evidian solution delivers security where it is most often needed, for user identification andauthentication when accessing key applications. This is now a key requirement for security
compliance, especially in the public sector under the CoCo policy.

Productivity and security
Key benefits of Evidian Enterprise SSO are it simplifies access to applications, which improves
productivity for staff as it eliminates the need to juggle and remember several passwords –which is often time consuming, improves working practice. In turn, this helps public sector
organisations to comply with government requirements whilst improving security. The solution
simplifies access for both office-based and remote users, and makes single sign on easy todeploy and manage.
Evidian Enterprise SSO’s ability to quickly and securely switch between users on sharedcomputers means staff can swiftly log in with a single user ID and password instead of having toswitch back and forth logging into multiple applications. This no-nonsense approach toaccessing applications is not only more efficient but more importantly, also more secure.
An additional benefit of the solution is its unique offline self-service password reset function,
which lets staff reset passwords themselves by going through a series of pre-set securityquestions. As well as encouraging employees to use the full range of applications available tothem it eliminates a significant number of password reset calls coming through to the IT
helpdesk. This helps cut costs as the IT department can focus their time and resources
elsewhere.

3939 A2A2 59LV58LV 0200 – Duplicopy – 2009

The Council is now confident it has the solution to help it maintain compliance with theGovernment’s GSi Code of Connection policy.

© Eviden. Evidian is the registered trademark of Eviden. All products, brand names, service marks, trademarks and other names mentioned in this document areproprietary to their respective owners and are protected by applicable trademark and copyright laws. Evidian reserves the right to modify the characteristics of its products
without prior notice.