Greater Nancy Metropolitan Authority
Offering remote work to employees and securing contractor access
Challenges:
> Offer remote work to employees
> Secure contractor access
Solution :
> cyberelements Gate
Benefits:
> Ease of use for employees working remotely
> An on-demand remote work solution
> A security boost for remote maintenance provider access
> Highly responsive support
cyberelements allowed us to roll out remote work very quickly for our employees, who appreciate how simple it is to use. For the IT department, it was the strong security of this ZTNA solution that really sealed the deal. We avoid the pitfalls of VPN by giving our remote maintenance providers limited access to specific, selected resources within our information system - something that wasn't possible with our previous solution.
The Challenges
Bringing together 22 municipalities with a combined population of over 250,000, the Greater Nancy Metropolitan Authority handles a very broad range of responsibilities, from water management to road maintenance, part of the public transport network, and street lighting. Within the metropolitan authority, the IT Department (Direction des Systèmes d’Information), made up of around 50 people, is responsible for a variety of tasks, in particular infrastructure management and application management—whether SaaS or on-premise, shared or standalone. On a daily basis, the IT department manages 3,200 active users across 220 network sites.
Following the Macron ordinance easing the rules around remote work, the HR department wanted to be able to offer remote work to the Metropolitan Authority’s staff. It therefore turned to the IT department to implement a solution that would allow secure remote access to the work environment. The solution needed to be deployed quickly: first discussed in January, it had to be operational by March 1st.
The Solution
The Greater Nancy Metropolitan Authority chose the Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA) solution cyberelements, opting initially to trial it for one year with 12 people from different departments. The platform was set up in half a day, first in cloud mode hosted by Systancia, to ensure very rapid deployment. With the trial proving successful – both for employees working remotely and for their managers – the decision was made to roll out cyberelements more widely.
Today, 200 people benefit from secure remote access, including 21 remote maintenance providers who previously accessed the Metropolitan Authority’s information system via PPTP (Point-to-Point Tunneling Protocol), a solution that posed potential security risks. The number of users is expected to keep growing. The Greater Nancy Metropolitan Authority continues to extend remote work to additional staff and now offers cyberelements to its member municipalities so they can enable remote work for their own employees: 8 municipalities are already using cyberelements to implement remote work. In addition, two-factor authentication via OTP will soon be tested for one of the Metropolitan Authority’s departments, whose information system is considered security-critical.
An on-demand remote work solution
For Virginie Debar, Systems Engineer within the IT department of the Greater Nancy Metropolitan Authority, the solution’s main strength is its ease of use:
“We wanted simplicity when it came to getting started. For an everyday user, there’s nothing simpler than going to a web page to log in. They feel like they’re logging in the same way they log into our email.“
This ease of use is reflected in particular by a single access window for all applications. By allowing selective, on-demand access to the information system resources each employee is authorized to use, cyberelements lets the IT department easily manage both remote workers and mobile workers through one single platform. This à la carte resource management also applies to remote maintenance providers, who previously had access to the entire information system once connected.
A security boost for remote maintenance provider access
The IT department decided to deploy this Zero Trust private network access solution, cyberelements, to also manage access for its remote maintenance providers – delivering a major security benefit through resource segmentation. The PPTP protocol shares the same shortcomings as VPN, particularly when it comes to access: VPN grants access to an entire network, whereas ZTNA grants access only to selected applications and resources. The same goes for traceability: VPN is less precise, since while it’s possible to know who connected, cyberelements shows exactly which resources the user accessed. The IT department also valued the fact that the solution is certified by ANSSI (the French national cybersecurity agency).
Highly responsive support
Another point Virginie Debar appreciates is the responsiveness of the support team—all the more important as remote work becomes an increasingly established part of employees’ routines. cyberelements has now become a critical application:
“cyberelements’ support team is so responsive that we know if a problem arises, we’ll immediately have someone taking charge of our request and keeping us regularly updated, which takes a lot of the stress off our shoulders.“