RSA Sign-On Manager Offers Upsell

Available in September, RSA Sign-On Manager will offer more than just a way for enterprises to customize secure SSO access across multiple Windows applications, Web HTML, Java apps, host apps and Citrix Systems MetaFrame environments, said Herb Mehlhorn, senior product manager at RSA, Bedford, Mass. RSA Sign-On Manager also will give partners upsell opportunities, he said.

Tim Hebert, CIO of Atrion Networking, a $20 million per year integrator, service provider and RSA partner in Warwick, R.I., said Sign-On Manager's upsell potential is easy to grasp. "If I have a customer who hasn't upgraded to Active Directory or the latest version of Exchange, Sign-On Manager gives me the opportunity to suggest it, and I get the software licensing opportunity as well as the services," he said.

Solution providers can upsell customers into RSA's own set of security peripherals as well, Mehlhorn said. For example, enterprises can first choose to deploy only the secure SSO functionality of Sign-On Manager. Later, an authentication layer can be added using RSA's SecurID authenticators, smart cards, USB authenticators, digital certificates or biometrics products, Mehlhorn said.

Sign-On Manager can limit network access by authentication method"meaning employees assigned smart cards only authenticate via their smart cards. Once a user authenticates, any application policies requiring routine password changes are fulfilled automatically by Sign-On Manager. In addition, an IntelliAccess tool offers an encoded, question-based emergency access gauntlet for users who have either forgotten passwords or lost an authentication key, Mehlhorn said.