Eacs Case Study

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“As well as

providing a

flexible, secure

and reliable

service that is

easy to use,

Signify gives our

clients the

highest levels of

customer service

and support. We

completely trust

them not to let

us down.”

Mike Dearlove,

Managing Director,

EACS Ltd

Founded in 1994, EACS provides IT solutions to a wide range of organisations. The company prides itself on supplying practical, innovative and cost-effective IT products and services to businesses of all sizes. This is made possible by forging strong partnerships with market leading vendors to deliver leading edge technologies and the highest level of expertise.

Easy-to-deploy and manage 2FA:In 2002, EACS recognised the increasing importance of two-factor authentication (2FA) for securing remote access to networks, data and applications. It had been offering clients a 2FA solution, but quickly realised that providing its customers with an easy-to-deploy and manage hosted service was the best approach to take advantage of the rapidly growing market for secure remote access. By doing this EACS would eliminate the painful upfront costs and need for its customers to invest in additional infrastructure and skills to roll out an in-house 2FA solution. And because EACS didn’t have the infrastructure in place to run its own 2FA managed service and wanted to remain focused on what it does best, the company looked for a partner that could remove the hassle and do it for them.

Reputable fully hosted service:The right platform, people and process would be critical to make the partnership a success. EACS needed a company that would securely and reliably look after 2FA deployments from start to finish and keep their customers happy. Very quickly, Signify stood out as a UK company at the forefront of what was still a niche market.

“It soon became clear that Signify was the obvious choice,” said Mike Dearlove, Managing Director at EACS. “The company

had a proven fully-hosted service that would enable us to quickly and easily get our customers up and running with 2FA. What’s more, the established track record of the service gave us the confidence that it would not let our customers down. Reliability is so important when it comes to a managed service and it would be our reputation on the line if customers experienced any problems.”

Over ten years outstanding service and support:EACS has worked with Signify now for over ten years, providing 2FA to companies for secure home working, connecting satellite offices and delivering anytime, anywhere remote access for people on the move. Currently Signify is used by many EACS customers and several thousand users and is able to boast a 95% customer retention rate. With more and more staff working remotely and logging on to company networks, it is vital that employers have security in place to identify and authenticate users and ensure that they have authorisation to access sensitive information and resources. Signify enables its partners such as EACS to take advantage of this growing opportunity.

“Time and time again over the last ten years, Signify has proven our decision right,” continued Mike Dearlove. “As well as providing a flexible, secure and reliable service that is easy to use, Signify gives our clients the highest levels of customer service and support. We completely trust them not

A Secure PartnershipEACS partners with Signify to provide reliable 2FA services to clients

Key BenefitsA source of recurring revenue streams – EACS benefit from recurring revenues year after year

Compatible with technologies EACS already sell – Makes two-factor authentication a simple ‘add-on sale’

A secure and reliable service – 99.999% service availability and a proven security record reflect well on EACS

Quick to deploy – The service is delivered in days, with no need for EACS to be onsite themselves.

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the world; dealing with issuing replacements for lost tokens; and deployment of new tokens during the expiry process. Signify is able to provision more efficiently and get EACS customers and their staff up and running more quickly than could be achieved in-house.

Commitment and support:The relationship between Signify and EACS doesn’t just play lip service to being a partnership; it is one in every sense of the word. For example, every year Signify has exhibited at and supported the Optimise IT event, EACS’s annual Strategic IT Solutions Update and Open Day which is now established as a key event for business and technical decision makers. It attracts vendors from around the globe and delegates come from all over the country, making it one of the UK’s largest independent IT events. Now Signify is supporting Optimise IT On Tour with events across the country.

“EACS is one of our oldest partners and the fact that we are still working with them and the relationship is continuing to grow is a testament to the expertise, commitment and quality of service from both of our companies,” said Kate Holden, Sales Manager at Signify. “Along with our continued support of EACS events, we are working closely on joint

to let us down. But more than that, they are great to do business with; everyone at Signify has a ‘can do’ attitude and will go that extra mile to keep the customer satisfied.”

Flexible authentication options:The Signify service has evolved since EACS first started selling it. This was the original hardware token based authentication where users have a physical token in the form of a key fob that provides a randomly generated one time password (OTP). Today, Signify also offers software tokens that essentially turn a smartphone or other mobile device into the token that generates the OTP, along with a tokenless solution that sends an OTP on demand to the user’s mobile phone. Basically, this means by using the Signify service EACS is able to offer customers the type of authentication that suits each individual user’s requirements and working patterns. For example, hardware tokens are often the best choice for frequent users, while a tokenless solution may work better and be more cost effective for emergency or temporary access and those that need occasional access to corporate resources.

Signify also has its own research labs that are continuously evaluating new technologies to ensure it is always providing EACS and its other resellers with the best possible authentications solutions.

“Hardware tokens have always been the most popular choice, but we are seeing a growth in other forms of authentication such as software tokens for smartphones” said Mike Dearlove. “The beauty of offering Signify is that we can not only offer a choice of authentication methods to our customers, but also that they can easily mix and match types amongst users. This means each and every user has the right one for their needs. This level of flexibility is unique to Signify and a great selling point.”

Easy, cost-effective token provisioning:Token provisioning is an important cost to consider when looking at 2FA. This means the deployment of new tokens to individuals in the organisation who could be anywhere in

[email protected]

www.signify.net

+44 (0)1223 472572

RSA and RSA SecurID

are trademarks of

RSA Security Inc

“As well as

providing a

flexible, secure

and reliable

service that is

easy to use,

Signify gives our

clients the

highest levels of

customer service

and support. We

completely trust

them not to let

us down.”

Mike Dearlove,

Managing Director,

EACS Ltd

marketing initiatives. We also hope that the new research labs at Signify will provide EACS with valuable insight into authentication trends and development to help them stay one step ahead in this growing market. And of course we will continue to help EACS to increase revenues through giving its customers the value add of 2FA without the hassle of implementing and running it themselves. At Signify, we do everything from start to finish, even dealing with replacements and renewals.”