German fund management company meets strict auditing, GDPR and German Federal Financial Supervisory Authority standards with One Identity Manager

LONDON, UK – One Identity, a proven leader in helping organisations get identity and access management (IAM) right, is helping German fund management firm, Union Investment, meet new compliance regulations, improve the provisioning and deprovisioning of accounts and increase associated operational efficiencies. Through its One Identity Manager deployment, the company has ensured same-day system access to staff, reduced manual processes associated with provisioning and deprovisioning users by 50 per cent and simplified security while ensuring that it can provide a record of access rights for at least ten years as required by the German Federal Financial Supervisory Authority.

In today’s data-driven world, the financial services industry, like many other industries, has faced great change. Union Investment noted the necessity for financial authorities to gain more clarity around data access by improving role management to increase efficiencies and ensure better governance.

The company, which has around €320 billion worth of assets under management, found that its role management solution no longer met business needs. It couldn’t provide a record of access rights for a minimum of 10 years, as required by the German Federal Financial Supervisory Authority and data protection regulations set out in the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

“With One Identity Manager, we can show who has access to what data for at least 10 years,” said Dieter Fromm, project manager for infrastructure projects at Union Investment. “We’re now fully compliant with government regulations in Germany.”

Furthermore, the previous solution was largely manual and lacked the tools to provision and deprovision access rights efficiently across the group’s six business units.

To overcome these challenges, Union Investment worked with One Identity partner iC Consult to extend its use of One Identity Manager. The solution had been originally deployed to control the installation of software on employee mobile devices and has been extended to cover access lifecycle management for its 10,000+ Active Directory and SAP accounts. This meant the asset management firm could meet all compliance requirements with a flexible IAM solution that allows provisioning actions to be accomplished in minutes, rather than days.

“Before, access provisioning took between three and four days,” explained Fromm. “Using Identity Manager, we can safely provide access to applications on the same day a request is made. As a result, we’ve boosted employee productivity.”

Andrew Clarke, director of strategic alliances & channel partnerships in EMEA for One Identity, explained how One Identity Manager is perfect for finance sector customers where security, compliance and efficiency are paramount: “Our partners know that with One Identity, they get the whole package to help customers get IAM right, and that includes securing data, improving governance and satisfying compliance requirements to reduce risk throughout the entire identity lifecycle.”

Union Investment has significantly increased the speed of fulfilling provisioning requests. Using a web-based front end, administrators can quickly select access rights based on roles templates.

“We’ve created 360 specialist roles in Identity Manager, each with access to up to 70 systems. Administrators simply click on one role template instead of 70 individual systems. The operation now takes no more than a minute,” said Fromm.

“We’ve cut the number of manual processes by at least 50 per cent. Identity Manager is a flexible tool. You can easily add features and functionalities; it’s a great solution,” he concluded.