Hitachi ID Phone Password Manager-- Telephone Password Reset

Overview:

Hitachi ID Phone Password Manager (formerly ID-Telephony) is a turn-key telephone user interface for the Hitachi ID Password Manager (formerly P-Synch) password reset system. It enables organizations to quickly and inexpensively offer self-service password reset to users over a telephone, without making costly changes to existing telephone switching infrastructure.

Phone Password Manager is appropriate for users who forgot or disabled their primary workstation login. It also enables mobile and work-at-home users to resolve connectivity issues without calling the help desk.

Features:

An organization's existing help desk ACD (automatic call distribution) system is configured to transfer phone calls relating to password reset, intruder lockout or RSA token management problems from the main help desk phone number to a turn-key Phone Password Manager server.

When Phone Password Manager receives a phone call, it prompts users to select a language, indicate the type of problem, authenticate themselves and resolve their own problem. Phone Password Manager allows users to reset their own passwords on one or more systems, to clear intruder lockouts on one or more of their own accounts and to manage their own RSA SecurID token.

Phone Password Manager authenticates callers using Q-A (Question-and-Answer) data stored in Password Manager user profiles or using a two-factor token (e.g., SecurID token or another hardware device). An optional biometric voice print verification engine is also available for Phone Password Manager, enabling organizations to authenticate callers by comparing a prompted voice sample to characteristics of a user's voice, stored on file.

Caller authentication data used by Phone Password Manager may be periodically imported into Password Manager from another system or may be collected in the course of a managed Password Manager user enrollment, with e-mail reminders to users followed up by users authenticating to a Password Manager web page with their network password and filling in their personal data. Voice print samples can also be enrolled using e-mail prompts to users and user authentication to the Password Manager web application, with a telephone used only for collecting voice samples from web-authenticated users.

Phone Password Manager can be configured to support users who speak multiple languages, by recording multiple versions of each voice prompt.

The call flow implemented by Phone Password Manager is fully customizable:

The user interface can be uni-lingual or multi-lingual.
Users may be identified by a numeric representation of their alpha-numeric network login ID, or by a numeric identifier such as an employee number.
Callers may be required to reset all of their passwords, or allowed to choose a single password to reset.
New passwords may be randomly generated by Password Manager, or entered by users using a touch-tone keypad.
Users may be given the option to clear an intruder lockout without changing passwords or may always be required to reset passwords.
New passwords may be pre-expired or may be usable until the normal expiration interval passes.

Phone Password Manager can integrate with any existing telephony infrastructure. To match Phone Password Manager to a given corporate PBX system, an appropriate Intel Dialogic telephony card is chosen. Dialogic cards are available for analog and digital phone systems and range from single-line to 32 phone lines per card. Dialogic cards may be sourced from Hitachi ID Systems or from telephony hardware suppliers.

Phone Password Manager may be installed on the same physical server as Password Manager or on its own Windows/Intel servers, with the addition of one or more Intel Dialogic telephony boards. Multiple Phone Password Manager servers can integrate with multiple Password Manager servers.

Phone Password Manager need not be co-located with Password Manager. Communication between Phone Password Manager and Password Manager is carried by a single, encrypted TCP/IP socket. As a result, it is possible to deploy Phone Password Manager servers in multiple locations and integrate them with a single cluster of Password Manager servers, securely connecting over WANs, the Internet and/or firewalls.

Benefits:

Phone Password Manager enables mobile users, work-at-home users and users who have been locked out of their primary workstation login to resolve their own problem without calling the help desk.

Phone Password Manager is an easy-to-deploy solution for telephone access to self-service password resets. In organizations that do not have a pre-existing IVR infrastructure, or in those where modifying IVR call logic is complex or expensive, Phone Password Manager is an attractive alternative, as it requires only minimal changes to existing phone switching infrastructure.