How Cybersecurity and Identity Management Drive Resilience at Major Food Producer

As in all large organizations, shadow IT—the use of cloud applications for business outside of IT review—was commonplace at this company, one of the largest chicken producers in the US, with over $5 billion in annual revenue and more than 15,000 employees. Different business units and departments were using various cloud apps with no centralized access or control.

Challenges
As shadow IT grew, the information security team recognized the inefficiency as well as security risks inherent in decentralized account access outside the domain of IT, particularly as employees left the organization.

Recalls the Director of IT, “We discovered that in order to provide federated account access, there was some customization needed for applications. Because we knew we were going to migrate a lot of apps, and needed to standardize on SAML 2.0, we had to ensure that the providers were able to support that. The cost and time to accomplish this weighed heavily on our decision process.”

So the company began to explore cloud authentication systems from identity and access management (IAM) providers, and how Gartner Research rated the suppliers in the IAM market.

Solution
“One thing that truly set them apart was, OneLogin was completely open to bring in applications without any cost, opening up options for our developers to bring in new apps. Standardizing on OneLogin makes it very easy for us—it’s been a great experience so far with bringing applications in, syncing user roles and the whole work process,” says the director.

Having over 4,000 applications in the catalog allowed OneLogin to shine very quickly. Almost every application the company was looking at was already supported. In addition, there was more flexibility with OneLogin, and in particular, transparency.

“OneLogin was very transparent and responsive about questions or concerns we raised with them. By contrast, their main IAM competitor seemed incapable of doing so. We felt we would have a better partnership with OneLogin, and that it would be a safer, more dependable company to do business with as well,” states the director.

He continues, “What clinched our decision was our experience with OneLogin Professional Services. We gave both OneLogin and their larger rival some very complicated network and technical requirements, which I knew could be a challenge for them. With OneLogin, in less than a few days, we were in operation and things were actively progressing. They were actively engaged with our team, managing from the initiation all the way to hand-off.”

“OneLogin also helped with integrating one of our key, companywide apps. The vendor quoted us a configuration fee, and OneLogin negotiated a 40% reduction on our behalf, working through that to ensure the integration was smooth. We see a real sense of ownership with OneLogin, you’re truly a partner. I’ve been highly impressed with the entire experience,” states the director.

The company uses OneLogin for single sign-on (SSO) and is the primary means of authentication for the cloud, and for logging into the Zscaler email security gateway. Other key cloud apps include Concur for expense reporting, SAP SuccessFactors for HR, and Skillport training.

With over 15,000 employees total, 4,700 are technology users in OneLogin. Most users need access to certain apps or components based on their group, which automatically syncs once they get their accounts created for access to certain apps.

Results
OneLogin has reduced significantly the time it takes to create a new user or provide user access to different groups and apps. By simply adding a user to one group, it eliminates the need to add them to five or six different apps.

Security has improved with real-time on-boarding when an employee leaves the company or changes departments. “OneLogin enables us to revoke access to applications much faster than when they were solely hosted. Simply by moving a user out of a group, access is terminated to those apps as soon as that change occurs. OneLogin has absolutely had an impact on IT efficiency, and from a security perspective, it’s been extremely helpful,” comments the director.

People-centric Identity Management
“Our user experience is, it’s very cool to use OneLogin as a central dashboard to access all these apps by logging into our branded landing page for OneLogin, then you can click on the button for each of those applications to log into them,” states the director.

“What I find most useful about OneLogin is the ease of use. Just by having a extension in Chrome, I can just click on a button, it takes me to OneLogin and I have access to everything I need. That is what makes it significant. And it’s such an easy solution to use from the IT administrator perspective as well,” says the director.

Why OneLogin?
OneLogin brings speed and integrity to the modern enterprise with an award-winning single sign-on and identity management platform. Our portfolio of solutions secure connections across all users, all devices and every application, helping enterprises drive new levels of business integrity and operational velocity across their entire app portfolios.