Password Kiosk

Approximately 50 % of all cases handled by the Service Desk (Help Desk) are related to passwords and locked accounts. It is time consuming both for the Service Desk, which usually has much higher priority cases to deal with, and for users. According to Gartner each password-related call to the Service Desk costs about $ 22.

Challenge

Forgotten passwords and locked accounts are time consuming both for the service desk and for users and create a high work-load and added costs for the Service Desk.

The Service Desk identifies users through an outgoing call to confirm the identity of the user requesting a new password. An important issue is whether this is a sufficiently secure method to identify a user.

Solution

With Nordic Edge™ Password Kiosk users can easily and securely self-administer their personal details and reset or change their password. Password Kiosk also provides monitoring and reporting facilities.

There are several different methods for verifying a user's identity in a password change. The solution supports the following methods:

Username & password
A one-time password is sent to the user's mobile phone.

Secret question & answer
The user receives a question to answer, such as favourite colour. The organisation can decide which questions are to be answered.

Trusted friend
A friend can help reset the existing password.

Certificate
If there is a PKI infrastructure in place, a user certificate can be used to identify the user.

Benefits

This Nordic Edge web-based solution for password management reduces the load on the Service Desk and the optional methods for verifying the user's identity raise the level of security.

The password is changed immediately which means that the user does not need to wait for help from the Service Desk. Because the solution is web based and is accessible via the Internet, it is always available to the user.

Technical specification