The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) last week announced it had selected San Francisco-based vendor Okta to enhance the security of its information systems.
CMS will deploy Okta Identity Cloud to improve the user experience for healthcare providers, modernize the CMS backend systems and make its infrastructure more agile as the agency’s constituents continue to increase in number and frequency of authentications. The software will integrate with CMS’s existing off-the-shelf commercial software for identity and access control.
According to a press release, the Okta software will enable CMS to improve the user experience for system administrators, employees and customers, by upgrading the user interface and enabling self-service features such as automated password reset. The software also will enable CMS to securely control user access to the Quality Payment Program (QPP) website and other services, quickly provision and deprovision users, enable multifactor authentication and mitigate unauthorized access.
Additionally, with Okta Identity Cloud, CMS IT architecture will be more agile, allowing for much faster deployment of applications, services and new functionalities, removing the need for patching, maintenance and upgrades, according to the press release.
