Grupo Godó

Requirement to improve security and integration capabilities

Grupo Godó was a long-time Novell customer, having trusted its IT architecture to ITechGrup, a company dedicated to software and hardware sales and distribution, as well as consultancy and engineering services around digital security. ITechGrup is a Gold Partner in the OpenText Partner Program for Micro Focus products. Over the years, Grupo Godó migrated to a Microsoft environment while retaining Identity and Access Management tools as these provided the perfect bridge between the Microsoft solutions and the many other applications that Grupo Godó employees and partners use in their day-to-day jobs.

David Ubeda Bricio, Workplace Manager at Grupo Godó, explains further: “When we moved to Office 365, we took the opportunity to rethink our security strategy. Of course, over the last five years or so, cyber security has grown in importance, and it was no surprise that our corporate insurance provider required more advanced protection against known issues, such as ransomware. We briefly looked at expanding our Microsoft licensing to include more identity and access features but found that a move to multifactor authentication would be expensive and not deliver all the functionality we needed. Instead, we asked ITechGrup and OpenText Cybersecurity to help us with this by expanding our suite of Identity and Access Management solutions.”

Shortly after the move to Office 365, the world changed with the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. This had major implications for Grupo Godó as it did for companies around the globe. “We needed to provide secure remote access to our key business systems, such as Salesforce.com and Citrix,” comments David Ubeda Bricio. “We had to quickly accelerate our plans so that our employees and our freelance journalists were able to submit their stories and still meet our publication’s deadlines. We have over 1,000 internal and external users and worked closely with ITechGrup to ensure they could work uninterrupted.”

The NetIQ solutions enable our internal and freelance journalists to collaborate using the same platform and tools. This makes submitting copy, editing, reviewing, proofing, and layout far more efficient and faster compared to the previous time-consuming model.

Secure SSO remote access and streamlined password management

José Luis Rodríguez, COO and Co-Founder of ITechGrup, picks up the story: “Leveraging Access and Identity Manager and Advanced Authentication, we quickly secured VPN remote access for everyone who needed it, across both on-premises and cloud-based applications. Thanks to the wide variety of connectors, we could integrate and connect all our key applications via single sign-on (SSO). The federation with Office 365 and multifactor authentication was quite complex and required advanced features that we collaborated on with OpenText Cybersecurity. We have been a Gold Partner for a long time and have acquired a lot of knowledge and expertise, but it is always good to know that we can rely on OpenText Cybersecurity to support us on specific use cases.”

As the helpdesk team would spend on average two hours a day answering password-related queries, the team took the opportunity to deploy Self-Service Password Reset (SSPR), fully integrated with Access and Identity Manager and Advanced Authentication. Apart from drastically improving the helpdesk’s productivity, introducing SSPR has also significantly enhanced overall system security by defining clear password expiration rules and a sophisticated password policy based on different user profiles, such as general users, administrators, and service account users.

Leveraging Access and Identity Manager and Advanced Authentication, we quickly secured VPN remote access for everyone who needed it, across both on-premises and cloud-based applications. Thanks to the wide variety of connectors, we could integrate and connect all our key applications via single sign-on (SSO).

Improved collaboration with a future-proof solution

Before multi-factor authentication was fully introduced, freelance journalists could not access the systems directly. Instead, they submitted their copy by email. David Ubeda Bricio recognizes the benefits of a secure and streamlined process: “The NetIQ solutions enable our internal and freelance journalists to collaborate using the same platform and tools. This makes submitting copy, editing, reviewing, proofing, and layout far more efficient and faster compared to the previous time-consuming model.”

He concludes: “We were under pressure to deliver a secure remote working solution as soon as COVID-19 hit. With the help of ITechGrup and OpenText Cybersecurity, we quickly accelerated our plans to deliver full multi-factor authentication. Not only did this solve the immediate problem of remote working, but it also gave us a far more productive and collaborative working environment. We estimate a full return on investment (ROI) within two years, based on improved helpdesk productivity and time savings through streamlined processes. It also gives us the opportunity to start introducing role-based access management to further streamline our HR and employee onboarding processes. In addition, the project delivered the flexibility to transparently bridge a hybrid on-premises and cloud application environment. We plan to move to an Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud environment within the foreseeable future, and the NetIQ solutions give us a great foundation for this.”