MIZUHO TRUST & BANKING STRENGTHENS SECURITY AND REDUCES COSTS WITH SAFENET’S STRONG AUTHENTICATION

Challenge-

As a global provider of trust and banking services, MHTBL is relied upon to safeguard assets and conduct a range of high-value transactions. Given the critical nature of the services and data it manages, MHTBL places a premium on its information security. In the past, the organization had relied solely on user names and passwords for granting remote employees and clients with access to corporate systems.

Their prior approach was presenting two key challenges:

• First, by relying solely on static user name and passwords, the bank was too exposed to a breach. These approaches were consistently being proven susceptible to social engineering tactics, password theft, and inadvertent exposure.

• Second, this approach was increasingly costly to support. Given the effort required to manage provisioning, and the frequency of inquiries surrounding forgotten passwords and other login issues, MHTBL has to pay a third party agency to manage access. This cost and complexity was compounded by the fact that many clients were based in Japan, while many support staff were based in Luxembourg, which meant multiple time zones needed to be supported.

Consequently, several years ago, the bank’s senior IT leadership sought to move away from relying solely on static user names and passwords for enabling remote access to corporate systems and services, and to begin leveraging multi-factor authentication.

Solution –

The decision makers at MHTBL initiated an extensive evaluation of multi-factor authentication platforms, and ultimately chose to implement SafeNet Authentication Manager Express (formerly SafeWord 2008). SafeNet Authentication Manager Express is a

pre-packaged, one-time password (OTP) two-factor authentication solution that provides MHTBL with secure remote access to the organization’s most sensitive and confidential resources.

After evaluating the solution, decision makers found that SafeNet Authentication Manager Express offered strong security controls, while presenting minimal management overhead and being easy to use for clients and employees. Further, SafeNet Authentication Manager Express was optimally aligned with the bank’s infrastructure.

Benefits-

Since deploying SafeNet Authentication Manager Express, MHTBL has been able to realize several key benefits:

• Strengthened security.  SafeNet Authentication Manager Express authenticators generate a highly secure, one-time password that can never be re-used, hacked, or compromised. The password’s two-factor authentication mechanism ensures that only properly authenticated users can access critical applications and data.

• Improved user convenience. With SafeNet Authentication Manager Express, users can quickly and easily obtain one-time passwords for accessing the services and applications they need, and they don’t have to hassle with forgotten passwords and other login issues.

• Reduced administration effort.  Through its automation of provisioning, the SafeNet solution substantially reduced the time and effort associated with supporting access administration, even across the company’s geographically distributed employee and customer base.

• Cost savings.  Before implementing SafeNet Authentication Manager Express, MH had to rely on a third-party agency to support provisioning and login support. Given the solution’s ease of use and automation, the bank no longer needed to rely on this external agency, and so realized significant operational cost savings.

• Integration flexibility. Through its support for open standards and a broad array of technologies, SafeNet Authentication Manager Express provides MHTBL with optimal integration flexibility. The bank is refreshing its current infrastructure, and the solution’s broad interoperability will help ensure an efficient migration of authentication services into their new environment.

About SafeNet

Founded in 1983, SafeNet is a global leader in information security. SafeNet protects its customers’ most valuable assets, including identities, transactions, communications, data, and software licensing, throughout the data lifecycle. More than 25,000 customers across both commercial enterprises and government agencies, and in over 100 countries, trust their information security needs to SafeNet.