ENGIE IT Consolidates IAM Platforms and Automates Legacy Processes

ENGIE SA is a French multinational utility company, headquartered in La Défense, Courbevoie, operating in the fields of energy transition, electricity generation and distribution, natural gas, nuclear, renewable energy, and petroleum. Supplying electricity in 27 countries in Europe and 48 countries worldwide, the utility employs 100,000 people worldwide with EBIT in 2022 of €9.0 billion.

ENGIE IT is a business support subsidiary of ENGIE GBS in charge of IT, employing 600 people. Its mission is to operate for the ENGIE Group in 5 main services areas:

• Network and Cybersecurity connects all the Group’s entities worldwide, providing ENGIE’s digital foundations and meeting the challenges of cybersecurity.

• Cloud Infrastructure manages the Group’s IT production resources in a cloud hybridization approach.

• Digital Workplace deploys the Group’s digital assets to end users.
• Digital and IT Consulting secures the success of the Group’s major projects.
• Agile business solutions deploy and support the Group’s business strategies.

To simplify their infrastructure, boost security, and gain the flexibility to respond to new security challenges, ENGIE IT chose to move to the cloud. After considering several solutions, they selected Saviynt because it provided the visibility they needed and allowed them to connect to their diverse endpoints with a single solution.

In Search of a Single, Cloud-First Solution

ENGIE IT’s initiative was to simplify their infrastructure with a single, cloud-first tool — and to have every new service live in the cloud. To do this, they had to migrate away from multiple legacy IAM tools to a unified, cloud-native tool that could better manage their diverse endpoints and target systems.

ENGIE IT’s existing identity infrastructure depended on two main legacy systems that were over 10 years old. The passage of time and the complex nature of the business required the systems to become highly customized, making processes complicated and evolution impossible.

It also became more and more difficult to update and upgrade the versions of both tools. Huge efforts were required to respond to new security needs or to obtain the proper security patches because their legacy systems were no longer supported.

For example, access to SAP required inspection of logs in multiple accounts in the different tools to understand who was making the request, who approved or validated it, and when or where it was made. This could take up to half a day using an asynchronous process.

Simplifying Identity Security With a Modern IGA Solution

ENGIE IT needed a solution that would ensure that identity became the single source of all authorizations in SAP and that would eliminate any security gaps. Their initiative was designed to:

• Reduce the cost associated with managing multiple IAM tools
• Eliminate parallel processes in SAP
• Provide more effective traceability to the audit teams (provide the proof expected from the controls)
• Align with ENGIE’s group-level, cloud-first strategy of moving more services to the cloud

Improving Visibility and Control of Access Authorizations

With Saviynt IGA, ENGIE IT completed the migration from legacy systems and now operates fully in the cloud. The utility achieved better visibility and control, improved SAP lifecycle management, and the ability to secure 40,000 employees at the group level.

By optimizing internal processes, Saviynt helped ENGIE IT make users more autonomous while maintaining the traceability required for the audit team. Saviynt also enhanced security by providing greater visibility of orphaned accounts and enabling current authorizations of any employee to be properly reviewed. Reports can be automatically sent to high-level SAP management teams to confirm or deny authorizations. 

ENGIE IT’s future plans include more fully utilizing the functionalities available on Saviynt’s converged identity platform, Enterprise Identity Cloud.