Bièvre Isere Regional Authority
Secure identity management to accelerate employee onboarding
Challenges:
> Streamline and simplify new employee onboarding processes
> Maintain strict and secure access control for applications
Solution :
> cyberelements Identity
Benefits:
> Accelerated new employee onboarding
> Significant time savings for the IT department
> Strengthened security standards
With an extremely broad application portfolio and growing adoption of SaaS applications, it was essential to implement automated management of employee onboarding and offboarding to ensure secure access to these applications. cyberelements Identity, which we deployed in 8 months, now provides comprehensive identity lifecycle management from hire to exit, raising our security standards while dramatically reducing the manual effort required for tasks like access assignment.
The Challenges
Bievre Isere Regional Authority in the Isere department, covering 50 municipalities with a population of 55,000. With staff distributed across approximately 50 locations, this authority manages diverse services including sports, family support, environmental protection, and more.
The IT department comprises 5 people responsible for telephony, IT infrastructure, geographic information systems (GIS), and digital skills training. An IT service consolidation initiative is currently underway to demonstrate the benefits of pooling resources across member communities, with around 50% of municipalities expected to participate in this new arrangement.
The primary challenge for Bievre Isere Regional Authority was accelerating the employee onboarding process to ensure new staff are fully operational and have access to their work environment from day one. Until recently, this process was entirely manual and represented a significant workload. An internal process audit also identified opportunities to strengthen access security across applications, particularly given the organization’s extensive application portfolio which increasingly includes SaaS solutions.
The Solution
Benjamin Delubac, CIO and Chief Information Security Officer of the intercommunal authority, had previously gained experience successfully implementing an identity management (IAM) solution to address similar access control and security challenges.
Leveraging funding opportunities available through the cybersecurity component of the France Relance recovery plan, Bievre Isere Community selected cyberelements Identity: a solution that precisely aligned with the authority’s needs. Co-managed by the IT and Human Resources departments, cyberelements Identity was successfully deployed and operational within 8 months.
“The early involvement of the HR department in the project was critical and significantly streamlined our operational processes,” emphasizes Mr. Delubac. Among the 50 applications in Bievre Isere Community’s portfolio, the teams prioritized the most sensitive systems: Active Directory and billing applications particularly the family services portal and water billing system. The strategy was to establish a foundation for centralized identity management across internal applications within the authority, then gradually extend governance to SaaS applications that currently operate outside the existing Active Directory framework.
Accelerating New Employee Onboarding
Deploying cyberelements Identity automated account creation and access provisioning processes. Previously, everything was handled manually and reactively (from labor contract generation through to application access setup). It took 6 days for a new employee to become fully operational.
Now, the HR department enters labor contracts into the HR system proactively, which automatically creates accounts in the Active Directory with a “disabled” status pending the employee’s start date. All access rights matrices are prepared in advance and ready to be deployed across business applications on the employee’s first day.
It was equally important to empower department managers with autonomy over interim staff account management, a function not handled by the HR department. cyberelements Identity’s delegation portal gave these managers full control over account creation and access provisioning for temporary staff, with clearly defined parameters (start and end dates) and oversight ensuring the right access goes to the right people. The implementation of notification workflows also improved vigilance and prevented access deprovisioning oversights.
Significant Time Saving for the IT Department
This automation of the onboarding process, combined with the autonomy granted to department managers for interim and intern account management, has delivered substantial time savings for the IT department on previously manual tasks. With account synchronization handled at the Active Directory level, the IT teams no longer need to manually create accounts and assign access rights. This frees up staff capacity to redirect their efforts toward higher-value expert-level work.
Additionally, cyberelements Identity is designed as an off-the-shelf solution that requires no custom development to deploy. Its user-friendly interface enables different business units to operate the system independently, reducing reliance on IT support for routine access management tasks.
Enhanced Security Posture
Strengthening security was a critical priority for Bievre Isere Community. Rigorous identity lifecycle management, spanning from employee hire through departure from the authority, has ensured maximum security over access and authorization. cyberelements Identity also secures access to SaaS applications, which are increasingly prevalent in the organization’s application portfolio. The teams are actively collaborating with SaaS vendors to enable account provisioning directly on their platforms.
Furthermore, cyberelements Identity’s account reconciliation feature delivers substantial value during access account certification audits by providing rapid, straightforward proof of account reviews. This significantly reduces the audit burden on IT teams.