Client Story
Single Sign-On Improves Security for Financial Services Giant
Foresters goes to market with independent agents who live outside their walls. Secure access with single-sign-on to a broad portfolio of products is critical. Their existing solution was expensive to maintain and lacked a robust roadmap. The question was where to go to find the right solution to meet their needs today and in the future?
About Foresters
Foresters™ is a life insurance provider with a difference. The fraternal benefit society, founded in 1874, supports family well-being through quality products, unique member benefits and inspiring community activities. Foresters shares its financial strength with almost 950,000 members in Canada, the United States and the United Kingdom.
Foresters’ Challenges
A broad portfolio of products delivered across multiple platforms and accessed primarily by independent agents working outside of the brick and mortar walls of Foresters means combining robust security with single sign-on capabilities. This functionality was increasing in cost and complexity and Foresters wanted alternatives. Exploring Unified Access Gateway (UAG) through a Proof of Concept (POC) might be the right approach – but how could Foresters ensure that the POC would give them all the answers they needed before committing to a full-scale roll-out?
The Solution
Foresters was able to prove out the ability of replacing their existing sign-on solution with Microsoft Forefront Unified Access Gateway (UAG). This meant testing a wide variety of applications – many of them running on competitive platforms. Ensuring secure single sign-on while maintaining application integrity was critical. Each application demanded a unique custom interface to support their exceptions.
Using this approach, Foresters was able to determine that every line-of-business application could be supported, providing the same or better levels of service and security in an easier to manage and more cost effective way.
As Foresters moved from the POC lab to a full production environment, they were able to reap further benefits using the Microsoft ISAS – Internet Security and Acceleration Service – migrating the bulk of their existing servers into the new environment and further decreasing project costs by leveraging an automated process.
The Rewards
Unified Access Gateway has provided Foresters Insurance with a premium secure sign-on process that makes management a breeze and protects all of the highly sensitive information that is stored internally in Foresters’ applications.
“Navantis understood the complexity of our environment and brought experts who quickly proposed a low-risk, low-cost approach to our project. We were able to answer all of the questions about the benefits of UAG in our environment before engaging in a full roll-out. Our team is delighted with the results.”
Kaleem Azhar, Director IT Architecture and Security
