Single-sign-on system makes sense for logistics firm

Logistics firm TDG has implemented a single-sign-on technology which will help save up to £8,000 per month in support overheads.

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The supply chain specialist manages more than one billion square feet of warehousing space supported by 1,600 vehicles across Europe and has retailers such as Argos and Early Learning Centre on its books.

Many of the company's staff have to use between six and 10 passwords to do their day-to-day jobs, according to TDG IT customer services manager Peter Ratcliffe. Inevitably, staff forgot passwords and relied heavily on the IT support team to reassign passwords to them.

Ratcliffe told silicon that requests for password resets were running at 400 per month.

The system, called Onesign Single Sign On from Imprivata, provides a central repository for users to log into, where they can receive automatically generated passwords for the applications they need to access. It cost TDG around £60,000 to implement.

Ratcliffe said: "In terms of the core business, the system hasn't had a huge impact, but it has made people's lives a lot easier. For instance, the finance system requires users to change their passwords every 60 days. It also improved our levels of security, as many staff were writing down their passwords so that they could remember them."