So you’re interested in implementing single sign-on. You know that everybody, including management, will love it.
But that doesn’t mean that management will give you a blank check to implement it. Like any security project, they expect you to make a business case for SSO.
Several years ago I engaged the services of an MBA to help me build an unbiased, management-worthy ROI calculator for single sign-on projects. I wanted to make sure that all of the assumptions and formulas used to estimate ROI would stand up to the scrutiny of even the most skeptical bean counter.
Perhaps more importantly, the calculator helps you determine how strongly you should be championing the project in the first place. Will SSO really save your company money? How much pay-back can you expect beyond the gratitude of your end users?
To calculate your ROI, you’ll need an estimate of the current cost of managing userIDs and passwords, the total cost of the password solution(s) you are considering implementing, and an estimate of how the solution will reduce the overall cost of managing passwords.
Simple? Not quite as simple as it sounds if you do it to MBA standards.
That’s why I encourage you to use the Botz Calculator, where you just have to fill in a few fields to calculate all of these values. Even better, you can adjust your time/cost estimates and immediately see how it impacts the end result. So if your boss says “Hey, our IT burden rate is closer to $45/hour than to $50/hour,” you just change the rate, check the results and continue your meeting.
In my experience, people are shocked by how much old-fashioned password management costs their company.
For an in-depth look at the concepts and formulas used in this calculator (which, by the way, is applicable to almost any security project), check out the following 2-part post.
And if you’d like my guidance while going through the calculator, I would be happy to walk you through it. Just contact me to set up a time.
