VINCI Energies accelerates its cybersecurity strategy around PAM (Privileged Account Management) with Ignimission

VINCI Energies, a major player in the energy transition and digital transformation, launched an ambitious privileged access security project in 2015 with the leading vendor in the field: CyberArk. Christophe Porciello, IT Security Project Manager / CyberArk Lead at VINCI Energies’ IT Department, explains the reasons for this choice: “Thanks to its policy of constant innovation, CyberArk has always been one step ahead of its competitors. The PAM solution offers a very broad coverage of the IT perimeter that is not found in other vendors. Thanks to their active partnership policy, they are also the only vendor to have successfully integrated CyberArk into many third-party solutions. If we were to replace our CyberArk PAM solution, we would need several aggregated solutions to achieve the same result.”

With 1,800 companies in 55 countries and 84,000 employees, securing privileged access represents no less than 75,000 accounts to be embedded in a wide range of technical areas: workstations, servers, network equipment, management cards, databases and applications. Cybersecurity is a major challenge for VINCI Energies, which has inherited a very heterogeneous IS due to sustained growth and numerous acquisitions. The management of a project of this magnitude could no longer be done in an artisanal way through Excel files. In 2017, VINCI Energies’ IT department thus chose to equip itself with the Ignimission Protec solution to optimize the governance of its project around the CyberArk PAM solution.

Christophe Porciello explains, “Before Ignimission, the management of our PAM project was very traditional and was done through numerous e-mail exchanges and Excel files. This process was very cumbersome because I had to check each Excel file before converting them and then integrating them into CyberArk. I absolutely had to find a solution to gain in productivity and simplify exchanges with our IT actors because the biggest challenge in a PAM solution is user adoption!”

After a few months of work, the Ignimission Protec solution is operational and integrated into VINCI Energies’ systems. The Cybersecurity team is now using the solution to manage the onboarding in the PAM CyberArk solution, automate data management, collect information from users, monitor and track progress KPIs, and link with other systems. Ignimission Protec offers users a simple and intuitive interface with a high level of control that allows them to quickly implement quality information in the PAM CyberArk solution and eradicate all risks of error.

“The added value of Ignimission Protec is obvious since many PAM projects could not be managed without it. Ignimission has become a pillar in the development strategy of our PAM solution and a real vector for acceleration. For example, we sometimes have requests to process quickly and thanks to Ignimission Protec we can now get an account on board in CyberArk in only 5 minutes, which would never have been possible before. To my knowledge, Ignimission Protec has no direct competitors on the market, at least not with this level of functionality and flexibility. The only other option to optimize the management of a complex PAM project and bring intelligence would be to work on a specific in-house development with all the constraints that this implies (development time and costs, maintenance…)” adds Christophe Porciello.

Regarding the scope of the project, Christophe Porciello explains: “We moved forward little by little, starting with what could be implemented quickly and had the greatest impact from a security point of view. In this way, we acted in concentric circles that we extended as we went along, starting with the servers and network equipment. We then turned our attention to databases and applications where there are long-term studies to be carried out. We are now focusing on the most critical applications and are expanding as projects progress. We will progressively extend our activity to international subsidiaries.

At this stage, we don’t know all of our future needs, but we already know that Ignimission will be a key solution to help us meet our needs. The software is very flexible, and the development teams are able to respond to our needs in just a few weeks.

Needs arise as projects progress, and with each new need, we talk to the Ignimission teams with the assurance that they will be able to handle it because the possibilities for customization and parameterization are infinite. In conclusion, Ignimission has allowed me to refocus on my core activity and our PAM strategy would not be as advanced without it.”

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