FPS Justice selects Devoteam for secure authentication of its applications

Belgium’s Federal Public Service Justice wants to strengthen its digital communication with public administrations and citizens. To ensure secure authentication when accessing data made available, FPS Justice turned to Devoteam for its operational and technical expertise.

FPS Justice is eager to make more and more digital applications available to Belgium’s public administrations and citizens, via a direct access. This requires a reliable and secure authentication system. Until now, access to these applications involved using a simple virtual private network (VPN). Today, FPS Justice uses ForgeRock to enhance its security layer, to collaborate with the FAS (Federal Authentication Service) of FPS BOSA (Policy and Support), and to ensure authentication when accessing applications.

FPS BOSA, which now includes Fedict, and FPS Finances were already using the services of Devoteam. So for FPS Justice, this was a logical continuation.

An integrated approach

The first pilot was launched in May 2016. Devoteam provided support throughout the transition and played a major role in designing and implementing the security layer. Additionally, it handled the continual updating of this security layer, in line with various requests. In the future, ForgeRock will also be used for the staff’s Identity and Access Management (IAM).

Integrating IAM is a significant challenge because of the need to adopt an integrated approach and to take into consideration every aspect of the IT infrastructure and systems. Devoteam integrated all the authentication means – such as the Active Directory, eID and the app ‘itsme’ – accessible through FPS BOSA’s FAS. “An implementation like this requires more than just the addition of a security layer. Everything must be integrated in terms of infrastructure, network, communication and security. Current applications need to be updated and new ones integrated. This process is ongoing and permanent”, added Jan Germonpré. “ForgeRock offers this flexibility plus the possibility to adapt the access security levels according to the applications.”

For example, the ForgeRock solution enables secure access to an application focused on judicial records. Public administrations can therefore request an extract from citizens’ judicial record. Notaries, lawyers and justices of the peace already use another application, ‘J-box’, which gives them access to a secure electronic messaging system.

Even more directly accessible data, in complete security

FPS Justice thus wants to make a growing number of digital applications accessible, so as to facilitate communication with public administrations and citizens. This intention to make far more data directly available to citizens is a vision that policymakers also share. ForgeRock’s secure access systems still have a bright future ahead of them.