Thai Government Uses eTokens For Secure Access To Budgeting System
Aladdin Knowledge Systems recently announced the Thailand government will deploy an initial order of 14,000 Aladdin eToken strong authentication devices throughout the country's numerous government departments. The Aladdin eToken solution is set to secure each department's access to Thailand's Web-based Government Fiscal Management Information System (GFMIS), allowing employees to access the application securely.
The GFMIS users within approximately 8,000 departments began receiving their customized Aladdin eToken authentication device last month. About the size of an average house key, eToken is portable, while providing cost-effective, strong authentication. Thai government officials accessing the Web-based GFMIS gain significant security by accessing the system using something they have, the Aladdin eToken, and something they know, a corresponding password.
With a large, dispersed group of government officials using Aladdin eToken, the Thai Ministry of Finance also deployed Aladdin's Token Management System (TMS) that allows managers to significantly streamline the control of the strong authentication process with a single system. The ministry combines TMS with the Aladdin eToken devices themselves to provide full life-cycle management of the authentication devices, including deployment, provisioning and ongoing maintenance of tokens provided to each department.
"Aladdin eToken provided unrivaled security both at the device level and the management level -- a vital combination for our government-wide deployment that will add important access controls for our budget system," said Supachai Jongsiri, CIO for the Ministry of Finance of Thailand.
"Aladdin clearly understands the need to maximize protection, while still minimizing the number of steps we need to take to initialize and deploy tokens. Through the TMS we are able to rely on many self-service options for maintaining and renewing tokens, saving costly manpower," said Dr. Chalermsak Lertwongsatien, information systems officer for the Thai Ministry of Finance.
In the coming years, the Thai Ministry of Finance said it aims to increase the number of officials remotely accessing through the Internet, further expanding the government's initiative to secure access to its financial systems.
Critical to the success of the Thai government's Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) implementation is the principle that each department's user possesses their own private key. This allows government employees to securely access protected Web sites and sign data and transactions. eToken eliminates the opportunities for these digital credentials to be exposed or compromised by generating and storing secure PKI keys and certificates directly on the eToken smart card-based device.
"Hosting its own certificate server, the Thai government is able to not only provide secure access to their GFMIS, but also allow users to digitally sign subsequent documents," said Kris Nawani, international business manager at Bangkok Systems and Software Co. Ltd., the local solutions provider deploying the Aladdin eToken at the Thai Ministry of Finance. "We see this large-scale deployment of the Aladdin eToken solution, which includes TMS, as an illustration of the power, portability and ease of use even in a vastly distributed environment involving thousands of departments and users."