FRAMINGHAM, Mass. — September 27, 2004 — Courion® Corporation (Company
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The seven-person support center at Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Alabama today is bogged down with approximately 1,400 password reset requests per month and the complex process of manually granting and revoking user access rights across its network. Resource constrained and unable to focus on the organization’s more critical IT issues, the company determined the need to implement an identity management solution that would securely enable self-service password management and, streamline and automate user provisioning across its network.
"We met with several companies who offered identity management solutions, but only Courion was able to demonstrate its suite in production at other client sites. We witnessed through similar implementations the corresponding business results and operational improvements that Courion’s Identity Management Suite offers,” said Jay Hall, unit manager, server engineering, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Alabama. “In the healthcare industry where security and compliance is of paramount importance, selecting a vendor who intimately understands the space and the need to effectively manage risk is critical. The depth of knowledge and the level of support we received and continue to receive from the Courion team is second to none.”
Leveraging its existing infrastructure, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Alabama plans to implement two of Courion’s flagship identity management products, PasswordCourier® and AccountCourier® to securely automate password management and user provisioning for network, email and other IT accounts across its heterogeneous environment. Seeking to provide multiple points of easy access for its employees, the company selected PasswordCourier Web, IVR and DIRECT! access options to enable the self-service password management process to users across the network. PasswordCourier DIRECT! enables users to quickly, easily and securely access PasswordCourier from the Windows logon screen or taskbar without being logged into the network. DIRECT! is now licensed to over two million users across Courion’s client base.
With Courion’s IMS in place, the company anticipates a sharp reduction in password reset calls to the technical center and added efficiencies resulting from automated user provisioning, thus freeing up much needed IT staff resources to focus on more business-critical IT issues at Blue Cross Blue Shield of Alabama.
“The healthcare market provides a particularly good opportunity to exemplify the value of an enterprise identity management solution in demonstrating compensating controls,” said Deborah Pappas, vice president of marketing, Courion. “The ability to deliver immediate operational efficiencies, productivity gains, cost avoidance, security enhancements and achieve regulatory compliance with greater ease clearly demonstrates its alignment with the requirements of today’s healthcare organizations.”
Courion has over 220 enterprise customers worldwide including several healthcare companies such as Capital District Physicians' Health Plan, Children's Hospital Boston, HealthSouth, Highmark, Inc., Kaiser Permanente, Sharp HealthCare, VCU Health Systems and Virginia Hospital Center.
ABOUT BLUE CROSS AND BLUE SHIELD OF ALABAMA
Based in Birmingham, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Alabama administers health and dental programs for more than 29,000 companies. The company serves as a Medicare intermediary claims processor for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Alabama processes millions of Medicare claims each year and administers both Medicare Part A and Part B programs for Alabama. The company also serves as the Medicare Part B carrier for the states of Georgia and Mississippi and administrates Part A Medicare for the states of Iowa and South Dakota. Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Alabama serves as the Regional Home Health administrator for 15 states and the District of Columbia. In addition, the company also serves as a data center for Puerto Rico Medicare Part B and the Program Safequard Contract for the state of North Carolina.
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.
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