Ohio Attorney General Fights Crime with a Cost Effective Solution from Novell

Security and identity solutions from Novell provide secure, online access to integrated law enforcement databases and deliver significant cost savings

21 June 2006

The Office of the Ohio Attorney General, the chief law enforcement agency for the state of Ohio, selected Novell to integrate the state's disparate law enforcement databases and provide its 44,000 users with secure access to over 70 million records to aid in solving crimes. Working with Novell, the Ohio Attorney General's office has connected its more than 900 agencies and improved the overall organization's crime fighting capabilities at no additional IT cost.

“We look at other states spending millions of dollars to do something similar, but not coming close to what we have,” said Mary Queen Cool, CIO for the Ohio Office of the Attorney General. “The real return benefit to us is the increased responsiveness of our law enforcement agencies around the state. Just saving one life or solving one crime gives us a 100 percent return on our investment.”

Using Novell® solutions for security and identity, the Ohio Attorney General's office can now share confidential information from 10 separate databases, including driver's license data, court records, and investigation tools, in a secure and easily accessible way. In addition, Novell Identity Manager automatically synchronizes changes to user information across all databases, which provides accurate access, allows IT staff to provision users in minutes, and saves on maintenance costs by eliminating the need for manual updates.

“Basically, we wanted to create a search engine for law enforcement, and security was our number one priority,” said Jim Jacob, Assistant CIO for the Ohio Office of the Attorney General. “The Novell solution allowed us to integrate multiple applications and give our users secure single sign-on access to tools that will help them solve and prevent crimes.”

With Novell iChain®, the Office of the Ohio Attorney General now ensures secure user authentication to a Web-based gateway, based on a user's name, password and identification number, as well as encryption to safeguard confidential information. Whether in an office, a patrol car or at home, users can access information within a matter of seconds, using a single user ID and password on any standard Web browser. The Web-based gateway is receiving an average of 600,000 visits each month and 120,000 search requests.

Kent Erickson, vice president of security and identity solutions at Novell said, “Novell's identity-driven solutions are helping institutions like the Office of the Ohio Attorney General make their information work for them by simplifying and securing access to the tools and data their employee's need. With trusted and reliable user provisioning and identity and access management, organizations are streamlining administration, automating routine processes, and controlling access in order to reduce complexity, as well as cost, in their IT infrastructure.”

About Novell

Novell, Inc. (Nasdaq: NOVL) delivers Software for the Open Enterprise™. With more than 50,000 customers in 43 countries, Novell helps customers manage, simplify, secure and integrate their technology environments by leveraging best-of-breed, open standards-based software. With over 20 years of experience, more than 5,000 employees, 5,000 partners and support centers around the world, Novell helps customers gain control over their IT operating environment while reducing cost. More information about Novell can be found at http://www.novell.com.

Novell and iChain are registered trademarks and Software for the Open Enterprise is a trademark of Novell, Inc. in the United States and other countries. * All third party trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

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