Assisted Password Reset
Password Manager includes an assisted password reset console, which allows IT support staff to help callers without having direct administrative access to target systems:
- Help desk analysts sign into Password Manager with a web browser.
- Analysts can be authenticated using IDs and passwords
internal to Password Manager or use pass-through authentication
to an existing system.
For example, help desk analysts may sign into Password Manager using their Active Directory ID and password, with Password Manager validating the membership of each analyst in a designated AD security group and granting appropriate Password Manager privileges based on that group membership.
- From the Password Manager web interface, analysts can
search for the caller's profile by login ID or full
name.
- Analysts can be required to authenticate the caller -- for
example by keying answers to some of the user's personal
questions, which Password Manager can validate against an
internal database or external directory.
Note that the same, different or overlapping question-and-answer data may be used for assisted password reset and for self-service authentication.
- Once both the analyst and caller have been authenticated,
analysts can reset the caller's password, lock or unlock
the caller's access to Password Manager or update the caller's
profile. Assisted password resets may be configured to also expire
the new password, requiring the user to change it on the
next login.
- All transactions -- analyst login, user profile lookup,
successful or failed password reset and more may trigger
e-mails to the user, to the analyst or to a third party,
such as a security officer. The same events can also trigger
automatic creation, update or closure of tickets in an
incident management system.
- Since only a single, simple web interface is used, an assisted
password reset is normally completed in 1--2 minutes.
- User-filter and account-filter plug-in points are available,
making it possible to delegate password reset capabilities
to managers, platform administration groups and regional
help desks and to ensure that such groups get only appropriate
password reset and user profile lookup privileges.
- At no point in the process does an analyst require administrative access to the systems where passwords are being reset. Instead, Password Manager uses its own credentials to sign into target systems, and these are encrypted in an internal Password Manager database.
Assisted password reset reduces the cost of password support calls and ensures that such calls are uniformly processed in a consistent, secure fashion.
Integrations
After a password reset, or following any of 163 other types of events, Password Manager can create, update and close a trouble ticket in any of the following types of help desk systems:
- Axios Assyst
- Altiris.
- BMC Service Desk Express (7.0, 7.5, 9.x)
- CA Unicenter Help Desk
- Clarify eFrontOffice (8, 12)
- FrontRange HEAT (5, 6, 7, 8)
- HP Service Desk
- HP Service Manager (any version)
- BMC/Remedy ARS (4, 5, 6, 7)
- ... and more
