West Midlands Police reports it has completed a pilot to test the feasibility of combining secure physical and logical access, smart card/chip and pin technology and the creation of a ‘Single Sign-On’ to all applications.
The pilot, developed and implemented by integration firm Enline plc, is now set to be rolled out across the rest of the force.
The two disciplines of physical and logical access security have been prominent issues for police forces and other organisations for some time, as has the desire to achieve convergence between the underlying technologies. Through this pilot, West Midlands Police have become the first UK police force to achieve this. The initial POC didn’t involve biometric authentication for controlling logical access – but at Enline’s recommendation, this technology was added.
Biometric technology has proved particularly useful from a practical point of view for officers in custody or public facing, front offices – where there is a greater risk of losing or damaging smart cards. Keyboard biometric authentication provides access to applications/information. From a strategic point of view, security levels have been increased, it is claimed. Senior managers have greater control in terms of managing access within the building. They can now restrict authorised access for key personnel to highly sensitive data. The Single Sign-On system also provides an audit trail for all application use/access, thus highlighting any potential abuse of the system.
Man hours
Historically, authentication and access management took up about 10,000 man hours per year, most done manually. Ten separate directories of access rights were used to control access rights to the 15,000 members of the West Midlands force. About 2,000 changes to access privileges are made a year, based on people moving or getting promoted. By automating the whole process with this new scheme, West Midlands Police anticipates reducing the administration time by two thirds. The new identity management system controls both physical and logical access to police systems. In order to gain logical access (onto the network/domain/to applications), staff must have first been authenticated into the premises via a smart card and biometric authentication.
