CTO Tips - Temp user access
Tips from the CTO
Insider advice to use your Signify service better.
Temporary User Access Control
If you need to issue strong authentication credentials to contractors or part time workers, or you have a rapid turnover in staff, you should try the Temporary User Access Control feature of the IMC.
When 'Requesting a New User', your HR Administrator selects which Authentication Nodes the user is to be granted access to. Normally the user's access is either permanently enabled or disabled on each Auth Node. By clicking on the "Enable User Temporary Access" box, the Administrator can grant the user access for a few minutes, hours, days or months and the activation will end on the specified date and time. No-one has to remember to disable the user's activations - it will happen automatically.
Thus a contractor can be given a token and be activated for their one month contract period. Or during an outage of a critical system, a remote IT Support Engineer's mobile phone can be registered to the Passcode OnDemand service to allow him VPN access for just a couple of hours while he is fixing the problem.
The system will even send a reminder e-mail shortly before the activation is due to expire, giving the Administrator a simple link to the IMC where they can extend the activation if appropriate. Some of our customers set all their users to have a 12 month activation, and use it as an annual reminder to check whether the user should still have access. It's a fail-safe system which eliminates the problem of orphan accounts.
Do let us if you use Temporary User Access Control - and let us know how it helps you keep track of your users. All comments and suggestions are welcome.
Liam Crilly - CTO
Liam.crilly@signify.net