Superior Turnkey Solutions Group (STSG) is a highly experienced software development and support company specializing in technologies and services providing software applications, consulting and infrastructure services, and support services focused on User Identity & Access Management (UIAM). These services involve solutions to all aspects of a corporation’s need to provision users and contractors, allowing authorized access to IT resources, meeting security and audit policies addressing both HR and IT’s IAM requirements. STSG offers Enterprise class software to consolidate and authenticate users from the moment Human Resources processes a new employee or contractor by granting access to IT resources in a timely manner. STSG’s MasterKey™ is a family of software applications based on Microsoft.Net technology that once installed, form a complete single point of provisioning a user. MasterKey™ allows for user resources to be modified, passwords renewed, and other forms of authentication to be controlled, managed, and audited with assurance that users, internal staff, and hackers cannot make changes without reports and notifications being issued to your security and audit staff.

STSG, with Development and Support in Tulsa, Oklahoma; and Finance, Sales, Marketing, and Operations in Dallas, Texas, specializes in technologies and services for the provisioning of Information Technology (IT) users requiring passwords to applications and resources requiring secured access.

SuProv™, a subsidiary of STSG, is the focal point for the development of MasterKey™ and has developed a user provisioning solution around the creation, separation, enforcement, and implementation of user provisioning for all IT system resources deemed necessary in a company. Once installed, this system allows IT and auditors to implement all corporate policies in Active Directory and other interfaced systems to be installed, locked down, tracked, and enforced against all users in a company. Users can be employees, contractors, partners, and others needing access. The heart of MasterKey™ is a front-end system that is driven by the Human Resources department, which manages all employees hiring and firing and tasks the chain of command. It securily logs, categorizes, and reports all activity that impacts Active Directory along with the other systems to appropriate designated management with notification and confirmations in e-mail.

In today’s complex IT world, there are three types of Provisioning Services that companies need to acquire for their users and IT systems. The first type is provisioning servers and the applications that run on them. The second type is the provisioning of services privileges for networks, storage, PC desktops, and user experience. The third type is the provisioning of individual users via their permissions, assigning access to secured systems, applications, resources, and networks from different locations over specified periods. This provisioning of individual users is found in Microsoft Active Directory versions, Novell NDS, SUSE, Red Hat, and MandrakeSoft. Provisioning should happen in a controlled, managed, and auditable environment to protect each company’s IT resources.

Companies today are challenged to leverage their Information Technology budgets to simplify their operations while providing more value of security access services and management control. Information Technology departments today have the responsibility of creating user access policies, implementing them, carrying them out each day and reporting how well they are being enforced to the auditing department. This is not a healthy situation since they need to directly delegate the active use and reporting of provisioning to be performed by other parts of the organization responsible for their day to day use. The ability by HR to perform the provisioning rather than send a request into IT saves days of time and efforts. The result is that IT can spend its time setting practical security policies that raise the bar to the highest standards while provisioning each department to manage its operations more efficiently to meet their goals.

Today, with mergers and other business requirements to maintain multiple secured domains, applications having their own authentication requirements, and remote and local users needing IT resources to perform their jobs, there is the need for a system like MasterKey™ to manage IAM as it is and not force changes. There is a need for a formal process to provision the right resources to staff assigned long-term projects, temporarily covering maternity leave or assuming an ex-employee’s files and information flows. Further, employees that are assigned a long-term project, on maternity leave and the question of what to do with an ex-employee’s files and information flow need a formal process to provision the right resources to other staff. All information, activities, logging, and changes are contained in a secured SQL database that manages and aggregates all activity and changes made on every transaction by HR, Auditing and Information Technology.

STSG recognizes a tremendous corporate need for our user provisioning solution, MasterKey™, driven by HR to solve a number of operation pains for our customers. For example, when two companies combine their operations, with competing IT/HR and audit departments having different policies, security and user provisioning in place, they still have to meet government-mandated reporting. We are able to assimilate all the different practices on day one of the merged companies and provide a combined database of each company’s provisioning requirements. This is done so that IT and audit security can maintain their policies while HR and the merger committee combine the companies operations and personnel. Thus, companies will realize savings in time, utilizing existing IT resources, and minimizing personnel conflict.