Tayside Fire and Rescue Extinguishes Password Headaches While Enabling Increased Access with Imprivata OneSign

Tayside Fire and Rescue provides 24-hour coverage, 365 days a year, protecting the local authorities of Angus, Dundee City and Perth and Kinross – everything from densely populated towns to vast areas of countryside. They have 721 firefighters with 50 fire appliances strategically located at 24 fire stations.

Following the chief fire officer’s directive that every employee – from firefighters to janitorial staff – be provided access to core applications through the network, there was a dramatic increase in IT use that highlighted issues of access control and management. “We went from 120 to 794 users overnight,’ says IT manager Gary Bellfield. “With users accessing as many as 10 separate applications our complex password policy put a strain on our IT support staff and caused frustration for all involved.”

The growth in IT use saw password resets increase to a point where they were accounting for up to two days a week of one IT member’s time. Bellfield and his team set about finding a smart and affordable solution to alleviate the problem. After evaluating a number of single sign-on solutions, Tayside Fire and Rescue chose Imprivata OneSign.

Offering password and biometric sign-on options, the system also included user resettable passwords provision. “Previously resetting or changing passwords could take up to two weeks,” says Bellfield. “Now it takes less than 30 seconds, and because there is only one password, we can insist on a stronger mix using a minimum of eight letters and characters.”

To find out more about how Tayside has seen a dramatic increase in its IT use and the way they addressed issues of access control and management, read “Case Study: Tayside” on computing.co.uk.