winnerSPECS
Name: Lynn Hersey-Miller
Job title/description: Chief
Program Officer
Company: State of Delaware
Department of Technology and
Information
Location: Dover, Delaware
Award: Security Architect of the
Year 2008
2008
LYNN HERSEY-MILLER
SECURITY ARCHITECT OF THE YEAR
Architect finds that better security improves IT
administration and enhances the user experience.
Maintaining centralized control of security, governance, and comp
li-ance while also empowering individual departments to take management responsibility for their own applications is difficult. But because
of Lynn Hersey-Miller and her team, the State of Delaware doesn’t
have that problem. That’s because Hersey-Miller, Oracle Magazine’s
Security Architect of the Year, implemented an Oracle Identity and
Access Management solution.
“While we have many centralized applications, their administration is decentralized,” says Hersey-Miller, who as chief program officer
manages the Office of Major Projects at the Department of Technology
and Information (DTI) for the State. The combined budgets of the initiatives managed by the office exceed US$200 million.
“Using Oracle Identity and Access Management is a win/win,
because the individual applications can be administered by our agencies at the same time that we implement standardized security processes across the entire enterprise infrastructure,” says Hersey-Miller.
Hersey-Miller and her team implemented a centralized identity
management system to facilitate moving more than 15,000 state
employees to an online open enrollment application for the selection of
healthcare plans and benefits. Oracle Identity and Access Management
was chosen, both as the basis for the project and for future access and
identity management needs.
Since the system went live in February 2007, the State of Delaware
has expanded its use of Oracle Identity and Access Management. Now
approximately 35,000 users across multiple systems use it. The result
has been not only an enhanced user experience but also much easier
IT administration, which is especially important because the DTI partners with different agencies that manage individual applications.
Although Hersey-Miller and her team considered the huge project
cutting-edge when it started, the State was able to go live with its
identity and access management solution in just over six months.
“Part of our success with this project is attributable to our participation in Oracle’s customer relationship program and the very good
working relationship we have with Oracle,” says Hersey-Miller. “It’s
been very beneficial. Another part of our success was the outstanding
teamwork across our department.”
The results have been impressive—especially when it comes
to compliance.
“Oracle Identity and Access Management has helped us to increase
our security standards and address a major governance issue,” says
Hersey-Miller. “Now we have set a standard for all applications, with a
centralized and robust governance structure.”
In addition, there’s the benefit of reduced complexity of application security. “Before, each application used to have its own security
table and management processes,” says Hersey-Miller. “But now we
have a centralized and standard way to manage users and security. It
reduces redundancy.”
