ANOTHER HEALTHCARE ORGANIZATION SELECTS COURION’S IDENTITY MANAGEMENT SUITE TO AUTOMATE USER PROVISIONING AND PASSWORD MANAGEMENT (email this article)

FRAMINGHAM, Mass. — August 3, 2004 — Courion® Corporation (Company Profile, Past Stories, Case Studies), a leading provider of self-service identity management solutions, today announced that Capital District Physicians' Health Plan, Inc. (CDPHP) selected Identity Management Suite™ (IMS) to securely automate its current manual processes for user provisioning and password management. With IMS in place, businesses such as CDPHP will more cost-effectively achieve compliance with industry and regulatory requirements, increase its focus on technical security, streamline business operations and reduce costs.

CDPHP will implement the two flagship solutions in Courion’s IMS, AccountCourier® and PasswordCourier®, in conjunction with its initiative to provide employees with a single online portal for IT support. CDPHP found that the manual process for managing employee access rights and privileges was taking up to two full weeks. CDPHP expects to shorten that timeframe to hours, even minutes, with IMS just as so many of Courion’s customers already have.

“We considered several potential solutions to overcome our identity management challenges and spoke with each vendor’s existing customers, especially other healthcare organizations, and Courion’s references had the most positive results,” said Christine Kittrell, security manager, CDPHP. “We are confident that we can achieve similar success even as we tackle implementing both systems simultaneously.”

Leveraging the existing infrastructure, IMS will securely automate password management and user provisioning for network, email and other IT accounts as well as non-IT resources such as phones and personal computers. As a result, CDPHP security administrators will be relieved of this burden in order to focus more heavily on the technical security of the organization. In addition, CDPHP will take advantage of IMS’ ability to integrate seamlessly with the Remedy help desk application for better tracking and auditability.

“CDPHP’s decision to tackle user provisioning and password management simultaneously is reflective of a shift we are seeing in the focus of identity management projects as of late,” said Deb Pappas, vice president of marketing, Courion. “While the benefits of automating password management have traditionally been easy to calculate, the sometimes harder-to-calculate benefits of automating user provisioning are becoming clearer. Our customers point to productivity gains, cost avoidance, security enhancements and the ability to achieve regulatory compliance with greater ease as some of the most important benefits of automating user provisioning. As such, many customers are putting user provisioning projects on the fast track along with password management automation.”

Courion has over 220 enterprise customers worldwide including several healthcare companies such as Children’s Hospital Boston, HealthSouth, Highmark, Inc., Kaiser Permanente, Sharp HealthCare, VCU Health Systems, Virginia Hospital Center and now CDPHP.

About CDPHP
Founded and guided by physicians, CDPHP celebrates its 20th anniversary in 2004 as an innovator in providing quality health care plans to the community. Ranked number one in member satisfaction for six consecutive years by the New York State Health Accountability Foundation (NYSHAF), CDPHP currently serves members in 24 counties throughout New York state including: Albany, Broome, Chenango, Columbia, Delaware, Dutchess, Essex, Fulton, Greene, Hamilton, Herkimer, Madison, Montgomery, Oneida, Orange, Otsego, Rensselaer, Saratoga, Schenectady, Schoharie, Tioga, Ulster, Warren, and Washington.

The CDPHP family of products includes three affiliated companies: Capital District Physicians’ Health Plan, Inc. (CDPHP)—AvidCare™, health maintenance organization (HMO); Healthy New York; Medicare Choice; Medicaid; Child Health Plus; and Family Health Plus. CDPHP Universal Benefits, Inc.® (CDPHP UBI)—AchievaCare™, preferred provider organization (PPO); and AdaptaCare™ (formerly known as Paragon), a point-of-service product (POS). Capital District Physicians’ Healthcare Network, Inc. (CDPHN)—AssociaCare™, self-insured plans.

To learn more about CDPHP’s products and services, visit the Web site at www.cdphp.com.

About Courion
Courion Corporation provides award-winning self-service identity management solutions in Identity Management Suite™. Over 220 enterprise customers worldwide including 50 of the FORTUNE 500 utilize the Suite to securely automate routine, manual processes for user provisioning, password management, industry and regulatory compliance, virtual directory management and digital certificate management. By leveraging the existing infrastructure and integrating disparate workflows within the enterprise, Courion solutions drive operational efficiency, optimize user productivity, strengthen security, reduce costs and ensure efficiency in achieving policy compliance. For more information, contact Courion's headquarters in Framingham, MA, USA at 508-879-8400 or visit www.courion.com.

2004 Courion Corporation. All rights reserved. Courion, PasswordCourier and AccountCourier are registered trademarks of Courion Corporation. All other company and product names may be trademarks of their respective owners.