I ran across this article about a small, but important problem in a hospital.  As relayed by the author, the nurses were unable to log in successfully to the computers controlling medications and had to revert to “backup” procedures which take quite a bit longer (and then need to be re-entered into the computer for tracking).

We rely on authentication all day long, sometimes explicitly, such as this case where computers are in the open (as they need to be), sometimes implicitly, such as when your email client doesn’t ask you to log in every time it checks for messages.  But what kind of backup can you get when a critical, explicit authentication goes down?  In this case, it looked like delayed services and a LOT of extra work for the nurses on staff.

Strong, yet simple authentication is a must, especially in places where speed can mean the difference between life and death.  Simple tokens such as YubiKeys paired with a GreenRADIUS server can provide simple, flexible, and reliable authentication services so your users can focus on their jobs, not on the procedures.