Leo Burnett Selects Courion's PasswordCourier

Business Wire, Oct 18, 2000

Business/Technology Editors

FRAMINGHAM, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct. 18, 2000

Self-service password management solution to improve security, lower support costs, and increase responsiveness for prestigious advertising

agency

Courion(R) Corporation, a leading developer of self-service identity management software, today announced that Leo Burnett Worldwide has selected Courion's PasswordCourier(R) to enable its employees to securely reset their own forgotten or expired passwords on business-critical systems and applications. Leo Burnett, one of the world's leading marketing communications firms, will deploy PasswordCourier on its Novell network and NDS-based applications to improve security, reduce the number of service desk calls, and increase employee productivity.

"Our service desk call volumes are increasing due to growth and new technologies. We cannot afford to have employees sit idle while waiting for our service desk to reset their passwords. Our goal is to eliminate the calls from employees who are locked out of their systems because their passwords expired or were forgotten. Courion's PasswordCourier will enable our employees to easily manage their own password resets," said Erika Hrastnik, helpdesk technical lead, Leo Burnett. "Its ability to integrate with our existing service desk software will also enable our support group to stay in control of the process."

"We're pleased that Leo Burnett has chosen PasswordCourier to provide an automated solution to one of the most common identity management problems facing businesses - secure management of passwords," said Tom Rose, vice president of marketing, Courion. "Password Courier will enable Leo Burnett to scale their support operations without sacrificing security, and will help their employees get back to work as quickly as possible when they are locked out of a system or application."

Leo Burnett's employees will be able to access PasswordCourier via their web browsers 24 hours a day, 7 days a week to reset forgotten or expired passwords. In addition to increasing end-user service levels, PasswordCourier will reduce help desk costs by eliminating highly repetitive password reset requests and lowering total call volumes. PasswordCourier will be integrated with Leo Burnett's service desk system to ensure that all password management activities, including changes, user information, time to resolution, and workstation IP address, are automatically logged for service management tracking and audit purposes.

About PasswordCourier

PasswordCourier is a self-service, 24X7X365 password management solution that securely automates password reset, change, and synchronization, the most common problems handled by e-business support centers. With PasswordCourier, users can help themselves when forgotten or expired passwords lock them out of critical systems or applications. PasswordCourier automates the complex password reset workflow - authenticating user identities, changing passwords on every system and application, generating service desk tickets, approving and closing tickets, and verifying changes via e-mail - by integrating with leading authentication databases and service desk software. PasswordCourier can be accessed through standard web browsers, Windows logon screens, or telephone systems to provide maximum flexibility for employees or B2B and B2C customers. Passwords can be reset, changed, or synchronized on virtually any enterprise platform, application, or directory service, including the Microsoft Windows family, Novell NetWare and NDS, UNIX, mainframes, e-commerce applications, and databases.

About Courion

Courion Corporation develops self-service identity management software that makes scalable, efficient service possible as e-business networks are opened to employees, customers, and business partners around the world. By replacing manual, costly, and unsecured user administration with automated, instantaneous, secure identity provisioning, Courion's solutions speed access to computing resources, increase customer retention, enhance information security, and protect user privacy while reducing service desk call volumes and costs.

Courion, based in Framingham, MA, was founded in 1996 and is backed by leading venture capital firms and private investors. Courion's customers include Boeing, Cummins Engine, Firstar Bank, Guardian Life Insurance Company, Penn Mutual, and Raymond James. For more information about Courion, call 508-847-8400, send e-mail to info@courion.com, or visit http://www.courion.com.

About Leo Burnett

Founded in Chicago in 1935 with eight employees and three clients, today Leo Burnett Worldwide, Inc. (www.leoburnett.com) operates a global network of over 282 operating units across 82 markets, including 93 full-service advertising agencies and a variety of specialty marketing services including direct, database and interactive marketing, sales promotion and public relations. Across the globe, the Leo Burnett network currently handles 34 of the world's top 75 brands as ranked by Interbrand, including Coca-Cola, Disney, McDonald's, Marlboro, Heinz and Kellogg.