Enabling business and security through technology implementation: A financial services case study

Enterprise single sign-on (ESSO) is the capability for users to authenticate once to an ESSO tool/product and be subsequently and automatically authenticated to other systems without any modification to the target systems. Empowering the user with such a single sign-on capability has multifold benefits. This eliminates the users' burden of remembering multiple passwords and enables an organization to increase security and achieve regulatory compliance while lowering help desk costs and improving productivity. One of the biggest challenges facing information security professionals is articulating the expected benefits of any security investments, such as in ESSO initiatives, in business value terms while linking to the organization's business and growth drivers. The article presents a B3C model for evaluating the business value of ESSO implementations and discusses details of a real-world case of ESSO deployment from the business, technology, and project aspects of the deployment in the form of a case study. This deployment was carried out at a northeast U.S. bank, where a commercial product was deployed that consolidated reduced system accounts to 14%. The article presents the outcomes and achieved benefits from the ESSO project as evaluated by the bank and discusses them in the model's background. The details of the case study are based on extensive interviews with the bank's team that managed and executed the project and on project documents provided by them.