Automate Compliance & Streamline Audits with Clear Skye Access Reviews

written by
Paul Walker
Identity Governance
ServiceNow
July 20, 2022

Organizations lose an average of $4 million in revenue due to a single non-compliance event, according to research from GlobalScape. When security professionals are asked how to improve their company’s security posture, the top answer is upgrading tools (67%). This is an effort which they also report is being thwarted by integration difficulties, lack of expertise, and the sheer number of tools to manage (Netenrich's Global 2021 Survey of IT and Security Professionals). As the data indicates, security and compliance tasks often leave enterprises stuck between a rock and a hard place. But pushing this to the side is not an option.

Meeting compliance requirements is critical for modern businesses—especially those in highly regulated industries, like healthcare and financial services. But historically, gathering data to support those specifications has been time consuming and resource intensive. In fact, 50% of IT workers still use manual processes like email and spreadsheets to manage identity-related tasks, such as controlling permissions and entitlements, according to industry research. And even organizations that leverage software for audits face challenges connecting data from different, disparate, siloed solutions

To further complicate matters, if an audit uncovers errors or breaches compliance, a major project to correct those oversights is inevitable. The proliferation of Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) applications and cloud migration has made this even more painful, adding significant complexity to access management and reporting. When it comes to compliance tasks, specifically, providing requisite teams with the information needed to perform an audit, takes multiple days for nearly half (45%) of workers with IT job functions. A third (33%) outside of IT roles also indicated an audit requires multiple days.

To cut down on time and headaches, IT needs a streamlined way to manage access reviews and auditors need a single repository for the data they require. By doing this, enterprises can review all access and audit all assets, on-premises or in the cloud.

Clear Skye Access Reviews to the Rescue

The ideal solution is one that’s easy to implement, use, and maintain through an existing SaaS business platform. It provides a single control point for all access reviews and audit reporting. Finally, it delivers a seamless user experience (UX) through familiar service portals and interfaces already provided via said platform. This significantly increases complete and accurate reviews—and it already exists with Clear Skye and ServiceNow.

Clear Skye Access Reviews simplifies access certifications and provides audit visibility through users’ existing investment in the Now Platform. By automating compliance activities, users experience increased speed and accuracy of access certifications through the easy-to-use Service Portal. This approach enables IT teams to easily monitor progress of identity initiatives and ensures appropriate levels of access across the organization at the point of need. And when workflow processes are consistent with business processes, everyone wins.

Some of the benefits of Access Reviews include:

  • Managing access reviews entirely on ServiceNow: Deliver a UX your employees already know and love, reducing friction, and avoiding the challenges of new tech implementations.

  • Streamlining delivery of data and reports to auditors: Eliminate the need to transfer and transform entitlement data between siloed, stand-alone solutions and your business platform.

  • Ensuring timely completion of reviews: You can start using Access Reviews immediately. Even better, you can start seeing results in weeks, rather than months or years.

  • Automating reviews and remediation: Human error is so last decade. Leave spreadsheets and manual tracking methods behind. Fix access-related tasks quickly and effectively to bypass compliance issues down the line.

How Customers are Putting Access Reviews to Work

Blackhawk Network, a global branded payments provider, had been performing quarterly identity attestation audits manually. Not surprisingly, auditors were spending far too much time emailing, updating spreadsheets, and generating reports—four weeks to be exact. The problem wasn’t getting any better: with more than 3,000 employees spanning 26 countries and growing, keeping track of appropriate levels of access was only getting harder.

Security teams performed identity attestation audits quarterly across the company’s Payment Care Industry (PCI) footprint. The process was dependent on multiple teams, including a Windows team that Blackhawk partnered with to run an export of nine applications. Information came in various forms from different managers. Files could be overwritten, people frequently switched roles within the company or were unresponsive, and as a result, the process was unnecessarily complex, and the team suffered.

But since extending its investment in ServiceNow with Clear Skye Access Reviews, Blackhawk Network has automated workflows to generate audits. This has enabled the company to generate an identity audit report in two hours. In a recent audit, Blackhawk Network received a 50% response rate within 3 days, closing 19,000 roles in two weeks—automatically. In fact, according to Blackhawk Network Senior Business Manager Aaron Nielsen, “The cost of Clear Skye paid for itself on the first attestation.”

So, Now What?

The future of identity is on the platform. Connecting your compliance efforts to IT Service Management (ITSM) on ServiceNow is a natural next step organizations that want to streamline their identity initiatives. Between pandemic-driven changes to working environments, an unsteady economy, and imminent cyberthreats, there’s never been a better time to do more with less. As Nielsen puts it, “If you’re able to use ServiceNow on a single pane-of-glass across your entire enterprise, it will prove extremely valuable.”

Complete and accurate access reviews are critical for compliance. If that’s not enough to sway you, the aforementioned GlobalScape survey found that performing regular compliance audits can save organizations up to $2.86 million. As businesses grow more complex and cybercrimes become more sophisticated, there’s no time to waste when it comes to regulatory compliance. To learn more about how Clear Skye Access Reviews can help or to request a demo, visit www.clearskye.com. Download the complete Blackhawk Network case study here.

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