Lentis
As Lentis’ IT environment grew in size and complexity, the organization wanted to guarantee secure identity management across its operations and reduce the time taken to provision new users. NetIQ Identity Manager helps Lentis to efficiently support a growing workforce and enhance organizational security by providing highly automated and comprehensive management of user identity information
Products and services
Outcomes
- Will boost the security of the computing environment
- Will make it simpler to manage identity policies
- Will eliminate time-consuming and error prone manual processes associated with user provisioning
Challenge
Lentis’ operations are constantly growing and the organization has seen an associated increase in the size and complexity of its IT infrastructure. The number of workstations in use at Lentis has grown by approximately 48 percent; the IT team currently manages around 2,700 network workstations and 5,400 end-user accounts at 63 company locations.
Identity Manager will save us huge amounts of time and effort and will also ensure that new users are given access to the information they need right away.
Eppe Wolfs, IT Manager at Lentis, said, “Provisioning new users is a time-consuming practice that typically takes us two weeks to complete, as we rely largely on manual processes. Additionally, removing users from our systems is only performed periodically, so there is a potential risk of ex-employees being able to access confidential information.
“As the company grew, we wanted to be able to ensure that we had a secure identity management system.”
Details
Solution
As part of an infrastructure renewal project, Lentis decided to upgrade its existing Identity Manager solution and to link the software to its human resource management (HRM) application, called Beaufort. It also plans to integrate the solution with a service desk tool, which will provide help desk employees with rapid, up-to-date information whenever they receive a request.
“By linking Identity Manager with our HRM solution, we will be able to automatically create user and email accounts for new employees,” said Wolfs. “Once a new member of staff is registered in Beaufort, the application will send the details to Identity Manager, which will then create a new user profile. Similarly, when an employee leaves the company, he or she will be deleted from Beaufort and the change will be registered automatically by Identity Manager, resulting in the instant removal of the user from all other systems.”
The rich functionality of Identity Manager gives us a huge scope for improving the efficiency and productivity of our operations.
Lentis is also interested in using new features included in Identity Manager to create automated workflows for self-service identity management.
“We want to give business users greater control over identities and associated access rights,” said Wolfs. “We plan to use Identity Manager to create a web-based, self-service portal, which will enable users to request access to particular applications or user groups. By defining specific business users as managers, we can delegate access provisioning, reducing the administrative burden on IT staff and speeding up the process.”
In the future, Lentis anticipates that it will make further use of the rich functionality of Identity Manager to provide better control of role-based identity management for employees working from home or other remote locations, enabling employees to securely access company systems from any location.
Results
Lentis is still in the process of implementing Identity Manager, but anticipates that it will see a number of benefits once the solution is linked to its HRM application. Centralized, highly automated access administration will make it simpler for Lentis to manage its identity policies. When Identity Manager is linked to the organization’s HRM solution, it will also eliminate time-consuming and error-prone manual processes associated with user provisioning.
“Identity Manager will save us time and effort and will also ensure that new users are given access to the information they need right away,” said Wolfs. “Rather than having to wait two weeks before a new employee can be added to our systems, this should be completed almost instantly and automatically when the employee is registered in Beaufort.”
The solution will also boost the security of Lentis’ computing environment, ensuring that organizational information is kept safe and made available to the right people.
“The rich functionality of Identity Manager gives us a huge scope for improving the efficiency and productivity of our operations,” said Wolfs. “The solution will make life easier for both the IT team and the users we support and will ultimately help Lentis to deliver better service to our clients.”
About Lentis
Lentis is a major mental healthcare organization located in the Netherlands that provides care, community services and support to some 32,000 patients annually. The organization offers treatment for both psychological and psychiatric problems and employs around 4,500 people.
