Based in Minnesota, Chisago County is a government office that serves as the administrative arm of the state, managing a wide array of services, including 911, hospitals and nursing homes, public health services, social services, corrections, child protection, library services, human services, planning and zoning, economic development, parks and recreation, water quality, and solid waste management.

The security imperative is high for the Chisago County network which uses four AS/400’s to manage sensitive data such as the 911 calls, tax and financial information and HR records. “Our number one issue was security.” said Heidi Moss, the Network Specialist in charge of the AS/400 systems at Chisago County. “There are many different systems trying to access the AS 400’s and we really needed to lock them down. One of the big problems is that we have over two hundred users signing onto our systems, which meant a high volume of passwords. That created all kinds of problems.”

“A password based system presented a constant challenge.” Moss said. “I spent a lot of time dealing with users who forgot their passwords.  Some users had a hard time explaining what they were trying to accomplish so I would have to spend quite a bit of time figuring their problem out.”

Chisago County needed a preventative measure to increase their level of AS/400 security and to eliminate the need for users to write down their passwords which posed a real security threat. They also needed a low maintenance solution. “I needed a simple solution. The AS400’s ship with IBM’s Enterprise Identity Mapping and Kerberos already included in the operating system, but it was too difficult to figure that out.”

The choice to use PowerTech was an easy one for Chisago County. Moss had heard about PowerTech EasyPass through a referral from another County that was already using the solution. “We didn’t try any other product.” Moss said. “I didn’t see anything else on the market that provided what we needed. I decided that PowerTech was the way to go”

The PowerTech Group provides security software solutions for access control, intrusion prevention and monitoring, and centralized iSeries security management on IBM’s iSeries and AS/400 servers. Their award winning security solutions are built by renowned iSeries security experts and are used by over 800 companies worldwide, including IBM.