Exostar, whose cloud-based solutions enable secure, cost-effective business-to-business collaboration, has announced that its Federated Identity Service (FIS) solution, a Software-as-a-Service offering for the issuance and maintenance of public key infrastructure digital certificates, has been deployed for Bell Helicopter, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Textron.

FIS is enabling Bell Helicopter to more effectively control access to its Sell2Bell portal, which includes reference materials, information updates, and links to applications that allow suppliers to conduct business with the company. Previously, supplier organizations and their users entered a username/password combination to login to the portal and were authenticated via the lightweight directory access protocol—an approach that did not provide two-factor authentication.

FIS delivers two-factor authentication and the assurance that Sell2Bell users' identities are validated before they are issued their credentials and given access to the portal. Bell Helicopter decided to upgrade the portal to comply with the strategic direction of Textron IT to adopt two-factor authentication and the A&D industry's standardization towards higher assurance credentials using Medium Level of Assurance and Basic Level of Assurance digital certificates.

"FIS gives us a variety of authentication levels, which allows us to address the needs of a diverse supplier base and gracefully transition to our ultimate goal," said Ken Waterman, director of IT Infrastructure, risk management and security at Bell Helicopter. "We worked closely with Exostar on all aspects of solution deployment, from supplier organization and user on-boarding, training, and support to the issuance, renewal, and revocation of digital certificates."