Multiple Platforms A joint white paper by Microsoft Corporation and Proginet Corporation. Proginet SecurPass is a security administration application that enables disparate security systems to work as one. Together these products enable system administrators to provide password synchronization across multiple platforms, eliminating the need for users to memorize several passwords. This paper will identify some security issues in multi-platform environments, describe the SNA Server and Proginet solution, briefly discuss implementation, and give examples of how the system works.
Many organizations employ technologies that have been built on multiple computing platforms.
While each system and solution was implemented for its unique benefits, these multi-platform environments introduce a number of complexities relative to the maintenance of security administration. Users may have had accounts on systems that the administrator was unaware of. As a result, when an individual leaves an organization it is feasible that some, but not all, of their user accounts will be disabled thus providing the former employee with the opportunity to access resources that they should no longer have access to. Help desk staff and Security Administrators spend an enormous amount of time resetting passwords for user's who have forgotten their current passwords. Each system has its respective audit log, which makes the task of reviewing these logs for potential access violations a daunting task.