Identity & Access Management in de ZORG
As a healthcare provider, Carante Groep needed to satisfy regulations on managing sensitive data while streamlining IT operations. The organisation also wanted to centralise and simplify network and application access for its users. Novell® Identity Manager provided a secure, automated solution with, among other capabilities, single sign-on.
Overview
Carante Groep consists of ten independent healthcare providers operating from more than 1,000 locations across the Netherlands. Carante Group has approximately 15,000 employees providing care for people with mental disabilities, and is also active in providing care for young and elderly people.
Challenge
A change in the Dutch law regarding computer security standards led Carante Groep to overhaul its user management policies. Previously, the company’s 15,000 employees had been able to access the company’s network and applications using one of 3,000 group accounts. The new legislation required each user to have a personal account—a requirement that caused a five-fold increase in IT department’s user administration workload.
To set up a new user, the IT team needed to create individual accounts in the company’s Novell eDirectory™ system, Novell GroupWise® e-mail system, and business intelligence application, as well as several other applications.
“With our current processes, it was taking our IT staff ten minutes to add each new user, and the sudden expansion in user numbers meant we would have been forced to increase the size of our IT staff to handle this,” said Jerry van Rekom, Head of ICT at Carante Groep. “We had a similar problem with revoking access for employees leaving the organisation or adjusting a user’s account—everything had to be done manually through the IT department.”
Solution
After considering a number of options, Carante Groep chose Novell Identity Manager to provide a more automated process for user account creation and management.
“We considered an alternative solution from Sun, but it was clear that Novell Identity Manager was more cost-effective and fully featured,” said van Rekom. “Above all, we could not turn down the superior integration and provisioning capabilities Novell Identity Manager offered.”
Working with Novell Partners—such as Trusted-ID—Carante Groep integrated Novell Identity Manager with the company’s three most important systems: Novell eDirectory, Novell GroupWise and its business intelligence application. Next, the team set up user accounts for all 15,000 employees in just three days, without a single glitch.
“Not only did the installation run smoothly, but the process was also useful to our IT staff,” said van Rekom. “We used the project to familiarise ourselves with the software, and we are positive we will be able to tackle most problems that may arise in the future ourselves, without the need to call in outside support.”
This initial implementation was the first phase of Carante Groep’s overall identity management strategy. The company plans to integrate a number of other applications with Novell Identity Manager, further automating its user provisioning and management processes.
Aside from automated provisioning, Novell Identity Manager also provides each user with a single username and password for all systems, as well as a self-service password reset portal.
“The password self-service feature in Novell Identity Manager has probably saved our IT department the most time overall,” said van Rekom. “The number of phone calls we used to receive asking us to change passwords was extraordinary, so this new capability is saving us a huge amount of time.”
Since implementing Novell Identity Manager, Carante Groep has significantly reduced its IT department workload (proportionally, given the increase in users numbers from 3,000 to 15,000) without compromising on security.
“Now that we do not have to input employee profile information manually, we are able to add new recruits to the system up to five times faster than before,” said van Rekom. “Considering that since we have adopted Novell Identity Manager we have grown from 3,000 to 15,000 users, you can imagine what an indispensable advantage this is!”
With greater control over which users are able to log in to which systems, Novell Identity Manager enables Carante Groep to safeguard its store of sensitive patient information, and to comply much more easily with data protection legislation.
“We can be certain that we have more than satisfied the new, stricter laws on access to information (including NEN7510 Information Security in Healthcare): with Novell Identity Manager, only authorised users can enter secure applications,” said van Rekom. “Security audits are not a problem, so a relatively small number of IT staff can handle the needs of a much larger workforce.”
As Novell Identity Manager is extended to integrate more and more of the company’s applications, the benefits of the solution will become even more evident.
“Novell Identity Manager allows us to approach a situation like expanding to new locations or connecting to new organisations with confidence, as we no longer need to consider making additions to our IT team,” said van Rekom. “Novell Identity Manager is helping us to work much more efficiently, using our existing resources to their full potential.”
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