Case Study

Secure Soaring at Britannia Airways

CLIENT: Britannia Airways, Luton, Bedfordshire, U.K.

Leading charter airline in the United Kingdom. Founded in 1962.

NUMBERS: Employs 1,800 cabin-crew members and 425 pilots; carries 8 million passengers annually on its 30-jet fleet.

PROBLEM: Britannia briefs pilots, cabin crew and ground staff before each flight, covering everything from individual passengers with special needs to the latest bulletins from aviation officials.Historically, the airline sent out briefing information on paper, but it wanted to switch to an intranet-based system that employees could access from anywhere. After choosing an online document-management program, Britannia needed a powerful but convenient way to control access to it.

OPTIONS: The airline considered using biometric or smart card products, but rejected those technologies because the infrastructure associated with them, including readers or scanners, was often unavailable remote locations and costly to deploy.

SOLUTION: RSASecurID® two-factor authentication provides strong protection against unauthorized access with none of the infrastructure limitations. “It was the
only roaming solution,” says Neil Boulton, Britannia’s head of IT.

HOW IT WORKS: The RSASecurID solution provides two-factor authentication. First, there’s the user’s RSA SecurID token, which generates and displays new, six-digit access codes every 60 seconds. In addition, each user has his or her own personal ID number. To gain access to protected resources, the user must present both the temporary token code and the correct PIN, making it extremely difficult to steal or guess the access codes.

IMPLEMENTATION: Six weeks flat from purchase to rollout. Users adapted quickly to RSA SecurID Software with minimal training. Now, Boulton says, “It’s part of everyday life.”

BENEFITS: RSASecurID Software positively identifies anyone seeking access to sensitive flight materials.The system also allows authorized employees to log in from any Web browser — meaning that users can prep for flights even when they’re not at the airport. It has also virtually eliminated paper; instead, users download data onto laptop computers or PDAs.

BOTTOM LINE: Officials credit the secure, streamlined briefings with helping Britannia maintain its reputation as the most punctual leading charter airline.