Access Control - SecureCenter

SecureCenter is a robust access control application for Internet publishing from GVPi. This software application provides a comprehensive set of tools to control access to your digital assets.

SecureCenter differentiates itself from other access control products by offering a full-featured rights management application at an affordable price. Its main features include:

• The ability to define products dynamically;
• Usage reports that provide clear insight into product performance and user preference;
• Flexible access to content allowing multiple e-commerce options; and
• Customer account management tools that minimize customer service efforts.

SecureCenter is a low cost/high performance software application that delivers an optimal blend of advanced features and ease of use. It allows organizations to maximize their return on investment.

Architecture

SecureCenter is a web-based application that runs in tandem with the web site hosting your content. It contains a web front end and a database back end. SecureCenter runs under Microsoft Internet Information Server (IIS) with the .Net Framework and Microsoft SQL Server. To take full advantage of the product’s powerful capabilities, your web site is integrated with SecureCenter through its streamlined interface. Only simple calls from logical locations within your site are required. Due to the close relationship between the web site and the database, SecureCenter is very responsive and extremely scalable.

User Information

SecureCenter determines who can have access to your content and under what terms, based on the products and users that you have defined. Each user profile within SecureCenter contains the necessary information to determine that user’s access permissions. User information is grouped into three basic types of information: access control, system fields, and custom (user-defined) fields.

• Access control information determines which products a user has access to over what time period, and the parameters that are used to identify and track a user such as cookies, referrer URLs, IP addresses, and login name/password.
• System fields are common to all instances of SecureCenter such as username, email address, company, administrative group, and parent username.
• Custom fields can be created to tailor SecureCenter to your particular needs. Sample custom fields include contact information, renewal information, and pricing information. Custom fields are flexible in terms of their data types, sort order, and whether the user has read/write access. Possible data types include text, integer, decimal, money, date, radio buttons, check boxes, and drop down list selections.

The user information can easily be entered into SecureCenter via the web front end. This information can also be imported in batches from an in-house fulfillment or accounting system. To close the loop with in-house systems, the data can also be exported from SecureCenter for use in other applications. For more sophisticated applications, SecureCenter makes the user data available via a web service so the loop with the in-house system can be tightly coupled.

All users in SecureCenter belong to a security group. By default, there are three built-in groups: administrator, customer service, and end user. The SecureCenter web interface is customized based on the permissions of the group that they belong to. Custom groups can be defined that have different sets of permissions. Sample types of permissions that can be assigned to a group include the following:

• Modify own account;
• Manage users;
• Manage custom fields;
• Manage products;
• View own reports; and
• View reports for all users.

Search Users

In order to be able to quickly find a user’s profile in SecureCenter, there is an advanced search form that allows you to search one or more pieces of information regarding that user. This search can then be saved for later use to specify which users to export or email. For example, you can create and save a search that identifies all users whose access to a product will expire within the next 30 days and that have not been sent a reminder email already. This saved search can be used to send an email that has been scheduled to run on a recurring basis without further intervention. This greatly increases the effectiveness of the subscription renewal process.

Products

Products can be set up and edited very quickly in SecureCenter. A product is defined based on a set of metadata associated with your content. For example, a product can be defined as content for the year 2004, or can be further defined as content for the year 2004, by a particular author. It is up to you how you want to define your products to best maximize your revenue.

Email Capability

SecureCenter has an array of email features that allow you to communicate with users in the system. An email piece created in SecureCenter includes who the email is from, the subject, the body, and any attachments. SecureCenter automatically determines if the body is HTML or plain text and creates the appropriate type of message. The body can be customized to insert user-specific information so that when the email is sent, the message can be unique for each user. Drop down list boxes that contain the various user-specific information make it simple to add fields such as username or account information. Once the email has been created, it can be scheduled to run on a recurring basis, or it can be the welcome email sent when a user is first given access. Recurring mails can be scheduled flexibly to go out one at a time or on a specified date and time, or it canrecur on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis. The daily frequency can also be set so that it runs more than one time per day. You can then view the status of the emailing in a log that tracks all messages.

User Activity

As users view content on your web site, their usage is logged. This logged data is then summarized and made available in a comprehensive set of reports that indicate how the users are utilizing the content. Sample reports include:

• The number of distinct user sessions;
• The most popular site pages;
• The number of times each document is viewed;
• The most popular words and categories that are searched; and
• Concurrent use violations.

Each of these reports is customizable by time period (daily, weekly, monthly), by user, and by product. Many reports display trends over time to help you find patterns of site usage. For further analysis, the data in each of these reports can be exported to a CSV file.

Security can be set on each report so that only certain administrative groups can view the report or so that a user can only view their own data and not the data of other users.

Customize SecureCenter Environment

Each user in SecureCenter can tailor their environment to fit their needs. Options such as the start page, the number of records displayed per page and the reporting time period can be specified so that when a user returns, it uses these settings as the default settings. For example, customer service representatives can set their start page as the “Search User” tab in the “Users” section, whereas product managers can set the “Product” section as their start page.

Summary

From its elegant but simple-to-use interface to its powerful report features, you will find that SecureCenter is a quality product that will assist you in increasing your web publishing revenue.

Call or email sales@gvpi.com to see how we can help you grow your Internet business.