Activate a Business Continuity License

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Business continuity licenses allow you to temporarily enable more users to use RSA SecurID authentication than your license normally allows.

Business Continuity Licenses

Business Continuity licenses allow you to temporarily enable more users to use RSA SecurID authentication than your license normally allows. The licenses include a corresponding number of on-demand authenticators. Typically, you would activate this license in the event of a disaster or emergency.

RSA recommends you enable the temporary users to receive on-demand tokencodes so that you do not have to assign and deliver tokens to them. However, if you want, you can assign them RSA SecurID hardware or software tokens instead.

You can activate one Business Continuity license. When the Business Continuity license expires, you can activate another license.

Activating This Option

You can activate the Business Continuity option up to six times at any time within the three-year Business Continuity option lifetime. For example, if you have 5,000 users and a 2,000-user Business Continuity option license, you can provide 2,000 additional users with RSA SecurID authentication. You would then have 7,000 users and 2,000 on-demand authenticators.

During on-demand authentication (ODA), a user enters a PIN. If the PIN is correct, an authentication code is sent to the user using either email or SMS (“text”) message. The user enters the code to complete authentication.

This increased capacity is available for up to 60 days, plus any additional hours until midnight on the expiration date (0:00:00 UTC). After the temporary expansion ends, you can do the following:

• Activate the Business Continuity option again. You must wait until the 60-day activation ends before activating the option again. Each activation includes additional users and on-demand authenticators.
• Unassign authenticators from users. Users who are assigned one or more authenticators count against the license.
• Obtain new, permanent licenses for the temporary users and for on-demand authentication.

When the Business Continuity period ends, you will not be able to assign tokens to new or existing users as long as you are over the license limit. Users can continue to authenticate with existing tokens, for example, if the activation ends while your organization is closed for the weekend, you can wait until Monday to activate the business continuity option again.

Before you begin 

• Contact RSA Sales to obtain a license that includes the Business Continuity option. Call 800-995-5095, option 1.

  You can install a new license without removing your existing licenses. For instructions, see Install a License.

• You can distribute ODA tokencodes by email or SMS ("text") message.

  Before you can distribute ODA tokencodes by SMS ("text") message, you must establish a relationship with an SMS provider, and integrate SMS with Authentication Manager. For a list of supported SMS providers, go to the RSA Ready page on RSA Link, and search on the term "SMS": https://community.rsa.com/community/products/rsa-ready

• Configure On-Demand Authentication.

Procedure 

1. In the Security Console, click Setup > Licenses > Business Continuity Licenses.

2. Select the checkbox for the business continuity license that you want to activate.

   

3. Click Activate.

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