Meet enhanced security requirements and achieve regulatory compliance by implementing secure host access to business-critical systems.
About US Federal Government Agency
This Federal Government Agency supports over 80,000 staff who use terminals to access dozens of Unisys mainframe-based business critical applications serving US businesses and individual citizens. As all US government agencies, it must adhere to strict security and data privacy regulations. As part of this, it must comply with the HSPD-12 directive, in particular two-factor authentication, or Personal Identification Verification (PIV).
With this large agency, implementing two-factor authentication or PIV has to be executed in careful stages, as even just a one percent fail rate would negatively impact hundreds of users. The agency has a long-standing partnership with Micro Focus and has relied on Micro Focus host connectivity solutions for many years, as the Senior IT Operations Manager explains:
SENIOR IT OPERATIONS MANAGER
US Federal Government Agency
“The only way to become fully HSPD-12 compliant is to identify and involve all internal stakeholders, including the dozen or so business application owners, as well as the security, systems, and network divisions. These teams collaborated closely with Micro Focus Professional Services to coordinate the implementation of two-factor and PIV authentication. Without the deep knowledge of our enterprise environment that the Micro Focus team brought to the table, this would have been near-impossible."
A significant requirement for one of the agency’s primary and largest business applications is that it must be addressed on the remote terminal station. This has always been a challenge, both from the user side as users would need to install configuration files manually, and from a maintenance perspective, to keep track of manual updates. As part of the effort to become fully HSPD-12 compliant, the agency leverages the MSS platform to centrally manage these unique addresses automatically, bringing clear benefits according to the Senior IT Operations Manager: “InfoConnect Desktop Pro and MSS just make sense to us, especially when we looked at other solutions that were proving cost prohibitive. MSS’s ability to automatically deliver configuration files securely and efficiently saves us many man hours. We used to send our users their configuration files manually, complicating central control.”
The long partnership between Micro Focus and the Federal Agency has allowed the team to jointly develop and code mature custom processes, modules, and procedures to not only improve overall productivity, but make the environment more secure and reliable. This has been achieved through designing and implementing systems and policies involving thousands of modules and components and containing tens of thousands of lines of code. The combined team also enabled connectivity to Microsoft Office Suite, as well as the use of macros and the ability to easily copy data content, thus eliminating rekeying to save time and improve user productivity. Leveraging Active Directory and user group rules, the organization is steadily moving towards managing all internal application access processes through MSS. The provisioning team uses MSS to provide secure user access, making it easier and faster to onboard new employees
“We have been working with Micro Focus as a trusted partner for more than 20 years to support our enterprise’s critical infrastructure,” says the Senior IT Operations Manager. “This partnership has made our enterprise secure, with modern interfaces, helping us meet evolving security requirements, including HSPD-12 compliance.”
He concludes: “The Micro Focus Professional Services team partners with us on special requests and we work side by side with the best engineers to come up with innovative solutions to complex problems.”
SENIOR IT OPERATIONS MANAGER
US Federal Government Agency
