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Nonprofit secures network access for temporary employees

  • Workforce Solutions Central Texas
  • Nonprofit
  • United States
Secure Network Access Temporary Employees - UserLock

Workforce Solutions Texas is an organisation based in Central Texas that administers the workforce investment act by helping people who have been displaced or unemployed in its seven-county area. The organisation helps people by equipping them with the necessary skills needed to succeed in a work environment. As an organisation, the turnover rate of permanent staff is fairly low. However, it has a section that works with military veterans who take on a short role for just two to three months, meaning there is a significant number of high turnover temporary staff. Workforce Solutions Texas employs 110 people all of who require regular access to the organisation’s network.

"With UserLock, we can now ensure all staff network access is via a login that is unique to the employee, is not shared, and that all actions thereafter are attributable to a specific individual."

Terry L. Gearhart - Information Systems Manager

The Challenge

Securing network access for temporary employees

Workforce Solutions’ three-person IT team handles the network, servers, telephony, and all things tech. One major challenge? Employees routinely shared passwords — especially with new or temporary hires who didn’t have their own credentials.

Password sharing and concurrent logins became a real security headache. With multiple authenticated sessions going on at the same time, identifying which user made critical changes was challenging.

Since Active Directory didn't (and doesn't) have a native solution for the issue of concurrent logins, Workforce Solutions needed to find a third-party tool to fix the problem.

The Solution

Ensuring unique user logins with granular access controls

When Workforce Solutions' information systems manager did a web search on solutions for concurrent logins, IS Decisions came up on top.

After evaluating UserLock, IT team saw it as the ideal solution to the problem of concurrent logins that they faced.

They went ahead with the purchase, and the setup process was fairly easy. UserLock took just a few days to implement.

No formal training was necessary. IT simply notified employees that they could no longer log in on two devices at the same time.

There were, however, a few leadership team members who needed multiple concurrent logins. Since UserLock allows IT to apply policy by AD users, groups, and OUs, IT could easily allow this by creating a special AD group just for them. This allows, for example, a training room login while they stay logged in at their desk.

The Result

Improving security across all employee network access (permanent and temporary)

Following the implementation of UserLock, Workforce Solutions has been able to:

  • Easily manage network access for temporary staff, implementing granular rules and restrictions for these staff, and enabling the team to follow a simple ‘exit procedure’ to disable access once staffs’ employment term has ended

  • Combat concurrent logins, further discouraging password sharing as users are significantly less likely to share their login if someone else using it restricts their own access

  • Monitor user access to track and detect potential security issues, as well as help manage workstation resources.