West Liberty Foods Turns to Imprivata OneSign To Address Critical Password Management and Security Challenges
By Achieving High Levels of Security, Productivity and User Satisfaction Imprivata Helps West Liberty Foods More Effectively Service Some of the Nation's Largest Brand-Name Chains
LEXINGTON, MA August 10, 2009 Imprivata®, Inc., the employee access management company, today announced that Iowa-based West Liberty Foods (WLF) has implemented its OneSign Platform. Selected for its affordability and comprehensive employee access platform capabilities, OneSign has allowed WLF to enforce more secure and complicated password policies without placing an undue burden on its users.
Founded in 1996, West Liberty Foods began as a 400 person operation which purchased a meat and poultry processing plant from Oscar Mayer, a division of Phillip Morris. Today, WLF employs approximately 1,800 people and slices 3.9 million pounds of turkey, pork, chicken and beef per week for some of the nation’s largest chains offering sliced meats including Subway® and Wal-Mart™.
Though WLF is not bound by any government regulations the company is committed to ensuring the highest levels of security. As such, it hires an independent firm to conduct random security audits, one of which showed results that helped IT validate what it had already suspected; employees were burdened with trying to remember numerous passwords to access data in a mix of web, client/server and legacy applications, including one for enterprise resource planning (ERP), which required users to re-authenticate multiple times after log-in.
“The auditor’s conclusions were directly in line with our internal assessment—we needed a solution capable of addressing our password challenges while increasing security,” said Michael Lewis, systems administrator at West Liberty Foods. “With OneSign, we were able to quickly implement and enforce more complicated password policies, while making it easier for users to access the information needed to do their jobs. The deployment has been a success and plans are already in the works to expand our use by taking advantage of OneSign’s support for strong authentication, such as finger biometrics and tokens, as well as for roaming sessions and fast user switching.”
Since deploying the OneSign solution users have a single authentication login to more than 30 SSO-enabled applications and WLF’s IT group can enforce stricter password policies while eliminating the need for employees to remember their user names and passwords. The OneSign implementation has driven the largest productivity gain by eliminating the need for employees to constantly re-authenticate once in the ERP system. Furthermore, the audit process has been simplified since IT can now easily generate reports on any user or activities in question to protect WLF’s data.
“Effective password management is a widespread issue impacting virtually all businesses looking to protect company data without impacting performance,” said Omar Hussain, president and CEO of Imprivata. “Recently named the 2009 Processor of the Year by National Provisioner Magazine, West Liberty clearly recognizes what it takes to succeed and specifically, the role that solutions such as OneSign play in putting their employees in the best position to help drive the company forward.”
Imprivata OneSign is an employee access management platform that strengthens user authentication to desktops and networks, streamlines application access and simplifies the process of compliance reporting--all delivered through a secure, self-contained appliance that requires zero modifications to existing IT infrastructure. Centrally managed from a single administrative console, OneSign secures access across Windows, host-based, Citrix and virtual desktop environments. Imprivata OneSign empowers the organization to balance the need for stronger security with improved employee workflows and productivity—while also reducing the time and complexity of complying with regulated access control requirements and password management costs that consume IT help desk resources.
About West Liberty Foods
West Liberty Foods, founded in 1996 and headquartered in West Liberty, Iowa, is a leading co-packer, private label manufacturer and foodservice supplier of processed meat and poultry products.
About Imprivata
Imprivata secures employee access to desktops, networks, applications and transactions. Its appliance-based, employee access management platform, OneSign, enables organizations to protect enterprise information assets while improving user productivity. By strengthening user authentication, streamlining application access and simplifying compliance reporting across multiple computing environments, customers realize substantial IT Help Desk and administration cost savings, while achieving the security standards they demand.
Imprivata is a recognized leader in Authentication and Access Management, receiving numerous product awards and top review ratings from leading industry publications and analysts. Headquartered in Lexington, Mass., Imprivata partners with over 200 resellers, and serves the access security needs of more than 800 customers around the world. For more information, please visit www.imprivata.com.
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