Telephonic Client Identification

Tools4ever, the market leader in solutions for Identity & Access Management (IdM), has introduced a new solution for helpdesk client identification. For most organizations it’s desirable to ensure that the person calling the helpdesk is actually who he says he is, when it comes to critical issues such as granting access to shares, e-mail boxes or assigning rights to applications. In practice though, this is often laborious and because of speed, identification of the caller is often skipped. With Tools4ever’s Helpdesk Caller ID Verification it’s possible to confirm the caller’s identity telephonically. The software asks helpdesk staff to fill in random characters from answers to the security questions answered earlier by the caller.

Helpdesk Caller ID Verification can be used as an add-on with Tools4ever’s Self Service Reset Password Management (SSRPM) solution.

Helpdesk Caller ID Verification works as follows: every end-user or client has answered a number of personal questions at an earlier stage. For example: “In which city was your first employer?” or “What is the middle name of your oldest child?” When the end-user calls the helpdesk or call center with a request, the personal questions are displayed on the helpdesk assistant’s screen. Below the question are only the number of characters of the answer, given in points, so the helpdesk assistant does not see the actual answer to the question.

The software asks randomly for certain characters to be filled in, for example the characters in the third and eighth positions. The helpdesk assistant asks the caller which characters must be inserted in the requested positions. After entering the correct characters the caller’s identification is completed and the request can be processed further by the helpdesk assistant.

Jacques Vriens, founder and owner of Tools4ever says: “Our Identity & Access Management solutions are deployed by organizations to streamline the user account management process and for authentication management, among other things. For many of these organizations the helpdesk is responsible for simple user management tasks, for instance, creating new user account or resetting passwords. For security reasons it’s necessary to establish the identity of the internal client, but in practice this often doesn’t happen. Given our experience in authentication management, it was a logical step for us to develop this solution.”

Tools4ever clients who already use Self Service Reset Password Management (SSRPM), Tools4ever’s solution with which end-users can modify their password themselves, can use Helpdesk Caller ID Verification as an expansion.