Cloud-based Identity Governance & Administration Migration

Challenges

• Manual management of user IDs for about 1500 employees across 65 applications
• 10 mission-critical applications represent 80% of their IGA challenges
• Inability to source an automated IGA solution due to lack of time, internal resources & industry expertise

Outcomes

• Assessed & analyzed in-scope applications & environment to understand their architecture & define their IGA requirements
• Identified two key, industry-leading commercially off-the-shelf solutions
• Recommended SailPoint IdentityNow COTS Cloud-based multi-tenant solution

Client Overview

This U.S.-based, employee-owned financial services firm is the third most active investment bank in the U.S. With 17 completed merger & acquisition transactions worth approximately $1.6 billion, they offer a range of financial services and advice to individuals, corporations, institutions, and municipalities nationwide.

The Challenge

As with many organizations, lack of resources, expertise, and time pushed some of their technical objectives from one year into the next, including selecting and subsequently deploying a more effective Identity Governance and Administration (IGA) program. While beginning their deployment of Workday, their new human capital management platform, they realized the timing was right to replace their completely manual identity provisioning processes with a commercially off the shelf (COTS), Cloud-based solution and implement a modern, automated IGA process.

Their 1,500 or so employees in 92 offices nationwide use approximately 65 business applications. All of the user identities for these applications are managed manually by a dedicated security staff, working with application and business owners. In addition to being extremely labor intensive and costly–requiring three FTEs – the company was at an increased risk for errors and time delays, as well as managing all that accompanies the mandatory governance reporting requirements, also a time-consuming, manual process. Financial institutions are heavily regulated, making their identity governance highly visible and mandatory.

Neovera Solution

The company asked us to recommend the right COTS IGA solution for their situation. As the scope, they identified 10 mission-critical applications, representing eighty percent of their IGA management efforts. Following our intensive assessment and analysis process and using our decades of expertise in security, including IGA and the financial industry, we performed a business and technical review of their IGA end-to-end lifecycle processes and technologies.

Our review included completing detailed interviews with the 10 application owners and administrators and comparing their needs against available COTS solutions. During these intense interviews and through additional research, we determined their needs included:

• Highly automated processes for employee integration with business applications
• Significant improvement in existing manual provisioning and entitlement processes
• Automated identity governance entitlement reviews and compliance reporting

For easier deployment and less manual maintenance, we proposed a multi-tenant SaaS Cloud solution. The initial outcome was a detailed assessment report recommending the two IGA industry leaders, SailPoint and Saviynt, both COTS, SaaS Cloud solutions. The report also included an analysis of each product, deployment options and overall cost of ownership based on our industry knowledge and security expertise.

Reviewing the options with their team, our ultimate recommendation was SailPoint’s IdentityNow solution, to meet current needs and allow for seamless expansion as their needs changed. IdentityNow is a true multi-tenant SaaS cloud solution that works in the Cloud and on-premises and deploys several releases per week without the need for any manual intervention.

Bottom Line Results

Implementing this solution will ultimately allow them to:

• Re-deploy technical staff to manage overall security programs instead of manual processes
• Show quick ROI through quicker deployment and a reduced learning curve
• Eliminate the time, energy, and money spent managing software and upgrades
• Experience fewer errors during identity provisioning and entitlements
• Receive faster and more accurate governance reports through precise attestation campaigns

Our in-depth analysis and recommendation, based on our consultative and security expertise, provided the company with the direction and confidence to move to an automated IGA process later this year.

Thanks to Neovera’s guidance and industry expertise, we found the IGA solution we needed and will not have to push the implementation off yet another year.