Leading global hospitality company boosts IT security with privileged access management

Benefits

• Boosts IT security at over 6,000 properties.
• Monitors privileged sessions for over hundreds of thousands of users.
• Adds session monitoring for hundreds of properties in a number of weeks.
• Halves the effort required to manage privileged passwords.
• Reduces amount of servers needed for privileged passwords.

The Story

When people check into a hotel, a complex web of digital processes facilitate reservations, payments, personalized room settings and other core services. Privileged IT users, such as system administrators, manage these supporting systems around the clock to ensure they’re operating as they should. At the same time, the privileged IT users must comply with dynamic corporate requirements and regional regulations that govern the system and data access.

One of the leading hospitality companies continues to drive growth by ensuring every one of its guests enjoys seamless experiences at its more than 6,000 properties globally. IT security plays a critical role in delivering personalized services, so the organization needed a solution for controlling and monitoring privileged users’ access and actions. Not only did the solution need to meet dynamic requirements, but it also needed to work with existing access management technologies. After thoroughly reviewing their options and recommendations, the organization chose One Identity Safeguard for Privileged Sessions as part of their solution.

The Director of Infrastructure says, “Putting many hotel networks into our identity management policies was expected to be a challenge. Safeguard for Privileged Passwords views users and systems as objects, providing an implicit link to our privileged access and session management solutions.” As a result, the organization eliminated the complexity it faced maintaining separate directory services and hierarchies for privileged passwords linked to users, systems, networks, devices and properties. The team was also able to support virtualization, root account management and provide an open API architecture for simplifying integrations between cloud applications and infrastructure while providing tools for automation and event management. Additionally, the privileged password processes became completely transparent to end users.

Boosting savings, efficiency and insight

The organization is now accelerating IT staff efficiency, improving insight and control over privileged passwords, and increasing savings.

The fully implemented Safeguard environment will run between on-premises devices and cloud systems. The Director of Infrastructure says, “We’re expecting to save significantly in annual costs with this system, gaining the level of control we need to meet the increasing requirements of our customers worldwide.”

Adding privileged sessions for hundreds of properties in a number of weeks

The company’s agility was tested when the pandemic temporarily closed some of its hotels. Suddenly, many globally managed properties needed remote privileged access to systems. To ensure all of these privileged sessions were configured and managed in compliance with the unique requirements of each individual property, the organization leveraged the One Identity solution. The Director of Infrastructure explains, “In a number of weeks, we went from managing zero remote privileged connections a day for some hotels to more than hundreds a day.”

Increasing security by reducing password complexity

As the company was expanding its privileged access footprint, the existing privileged password technology was nearing end of life, providing an opportunity to enhance its security capabilities and identify a new solution that was able to manage the associated automation, virtualization and other integrations that were needed.