Leading oil and gas producer provides seamless and secure access for multiple 10K users

The struggle to manage access in an efficient way

A leading oil and gas company in Oman has 8,000 employees and 45,000 contractors. All of these users need access to corporate applications, and a technical solution was needed to handle authentication on such a large scale.

There was no automation of the ‘join, move, leave’ policies, user permission levels, or approval requests. The processes were mostly manual and sometimes paper-based, which was inefficient, costly to run and increased the risk of unauthorised access.

The organisation needed an identity and access management solution to provide accounts with access to the systems and resources they needed. The objectives of the project were as follows:

• Streamline identity and access processes by introducing a web-based interface and automating access the provisioning and deprovisioning of access across multiple systems.
• Reduce administrative costs by reducing the current burden on IT through automation, self-service, and delegation of administration.
• Enforce tighter security controls by providing robust authentication and authorisation mechanisms to ensure that users can only perform the tasks for which they are authorised.
• Improve regulatory compliance by proactively complying with governmental and commercial identity and access management regulations.

Efficiency gains through access automation

In partnership with Microsoft Oman, SoftwareOne implemented a solution that automated identity lifecycle management for internal and external users. This included access provisioning: creating AD accounts and mailboxes and adding users to groups; and deprovisioning: disabling AD accounts and mailboxes.

Guidelines were also developed for access to data sources with varying levels of sensitivity were drafted. Self-service accounts were provided using Microsoft Identity Manager (MIM) for resetting passwords reducing the volume of calls to the helpdesk. The system was also integrated with SMS as one of the authentication steps.

To strengthen information security and reduce the risk of data breaches, we developed separate usage scenarios for employees and external contractors. Finally, we established a system of records as a central source of information about employees in the organisation.