How Sportsbet enhanced data security with automation

At Sportsbet, an Australian online betting company with more than 1.25 million customers, one thing we’re not willing to take a gamble on is customer security.

That means having strict identity and access management protocols in place to protect customer data and get better visibility into whom our employees are and what they have access to. With the relentless tide of cyberattacks against organizations becoming more sophisticated, a strong user access management strategy is more important than ever.

Reducing organizational risk

That’s why we kicked off Access Capability Enhancement (ACE), our program to reduce the risk of identity and access management, ensure compliance, and minimize access to customer data.

To reach those goals, we needed three key elements:

1. Consistent data. Like many companies, Sportsbet had multiple sources of employee data, duplicate records and users accounts, and incomplete data.
   
   
2. Operational simplicity. The complex process of adding a new hire needed to be simplified, and some of the manual touchpoints needed to be removed. That meant dealing with custom scripts we had created that were difficult to modify and maintain and prone to breaking—triggering yet another manual intervention.
   
   
3. Enhanced visibility. From line manager’s inability to track the status of their requests to having no clear process to reactivate accounts for contractors or third parties, lack of visibility was a broad problem. The system couldn’t recognize past employees from new ones, so it ended up with duplicated accounts and messy data.
   
   

Bringing in standard workflows and automation

Clearly, it was time to bring in a powerful workflow engine to automate and standardize these processes. We defined eight requirements to support this project and optimize processes across the business:

• Customer-first approach
  
• Strong automation capabilities
  
• Cloud solution
  
• Least privilege policy
  
• Great user experience
  
• Scalable and flexible solution
  
• Single source of truth
  
• Effective compliance control
  

ServiceNow IT Service Management (ITSM) gave us all this and more, thanks to its ability to seamlessly integrate with a large number of other systems. We completely redesigned our onboarding process using IntegrationHub to connect ServiceNow solutions with our new HR platform and Microsoft Active Directory, an identity management solution.

Saving time with automated workflows

Now, the line manager initiates a single request from our user-friendly ServiceNow portal, and automated workflows do the rest. The system uses REST APIs and IntegrationHub to check for duplicate records, routing cases to a member of the support team if it identifies an issue.

The system also creates the user account with the right level of access and sends an email with the user’s login details back to the line manager. This process, which used to take half an hour of manual effort, now takes less than two minutes.

Our asset catalog and configuration management database (CMDB) provide easy access to data about applications and help us order the right kit for new hires. ServiceNow Activity Portal (SNAP) gives employees a central gateway for all user requests, with a consistent look and feel across all communications: incident, request, and change management.

Secure access and data

ServiceNow helped slash the time it takes to create a new user account by 93%. In addition, it now takes 86% less effort to make an update to someone’s role. The user experience is better, multiple requests can be triggered from a single form, and we’ve laid the foundations for future enhancements.

ServiceNow has reduced risk of a security breach and enhanced compliance. Our team has greater confidence our data is accurate and reliable. These are all key ingredients to keep staff and customer data secure—and a powerful foundation to optimize other areas of the business. That’s something safe to bet on.

Find out more about Sportsbet’s user access management optimization in our Knowledge 2021 session. Registration is free.

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