Case Studies Archives

A Customized Device-Based Access Control Solution for an Automotive Ancillary Major using Akku

Data security is a critical business priority today – this is especially true for businesses in industries such as manufacturing, where intellectual property as well as customer data are involved.

This was the case for our client too – a leading player in the automotive ancillary manufacturing space. In this blog, we explore their specific challenge in safeguarding their digital assets, and how Akku was able to deliver a customized solution to address the client’s needs.

The Challenge

The client runs regular audits to assess their security posture, and to identify areas where their existing Google Workspace could itself provide adequate security measures in terms of access control.

In one such audit, they identified a critical gap. Employees at the company were increasingly needing to work remotely, but the existing endpoint security solution was only capable of restricting access to the company’s network and disabling all remote access.

Additionally, it was necessary to permit access for any user from any approved company laptop or desktop – a challenge given that the conventional device-based restriction approach generally maps one user to one device.

Akku’s Innovative Approach

Our team at Akku addressed this challenge with a customized device-based restriction strategy.

To allow any user to access applications and data from any of the company’s laptops or desktops, we decided to implement a many-to-many mapping system. This unique solution involved the development of a custom application, the Akku Agent, installed on every whitelisted device.

The Implementation

Through the client’s inventory system, all machine serial numbers were captured and uploaded to Akku. The login process was then revamped to require all users to authenticate via Akku only.

When a user logs in, the Akku Agent now verifies the device’s serial number against the whitelisted devices in Akku, and allows access from any location, including outside the client’s network, as long as the request is made from an approved device.

This solution seamlessly addressed the core challenge of permitting remote user access from approved devices.

Tackling Mobile Access

The next hurdle was controlling mobile access. Based on the Google Workspace plans assigned to the company’s users, the Google Workspace Advanced MDM functionality addressed mobile access control for only a subset of the company’s users.

For all other users, access from any mobile device remained unchecked. Additionally, inventorying all personal devices of employees was impractical.

Akku’s solution was to restrict user mobile access to a controlled number of manually approved devices per user. By default, users were not permitted mobile access. Upon necessity, they could contact the admin to get a device approved, ensuring secure and controlled mobile access. And in case of a change of device, such as on purchase of a new phone, the admin would be able to deactivate access to the old device and enable access to the new device.

The Outcome

By integrating Akku, the client not only overcame the limitations of their existing security system, but also enabled secure remote access for their employees with seamless device-based access control measures.

The solution addressed the unique challenges faced by our client through Akku’s flexibility and our team’s custom development and deployment solution.

Akku’s flexible and innovative IAM solutions can transform your organization’s security landscape too. Talk to us to know more today.

Addressing Challenges in Implementing “The Use of Company Property” policy at a Leading Insurance Company

Company X is a leading insurance company which provides laptops to all employees for their work, regardless of their grade in the organization’s hierarchy.

The company has deployed a gateway firewall, incorporated with a DNS filter to blacklist or whitelist access to certain websites. In this manner, users are denied access to malicious websites, and threats due to unauthorized website use is prevented while users are within the office network.

How DNS Filtering Works?

Whenever a user makes an internet search, a request is passed on to the network through an IP. However, when DNS filtering is implemented in an organization, the relevant web page is redirected to the firewall where the restrictions are verified. If it has been blacklisted, access to the webpage is blocked.

Loophole Causing Security Concern

When more and more users beginning to work from home or work while travelling using the laptops provided by the company, Company X began facing new security concerns.

Although the firewall’s DNS filter was effective when users were within the office network, the user’s laptops were outside of the firewall’s reach. This meant that users could access any site or download any software without any restrictions, exposing the company-owned devices (COD) at risk due to unauthorized websites. This, in turn, threatened to compromise both the devices and the data stored in them.

It also made the devices non-compliant to the Company Owned Device (COD) policy.

Prognosis

The DNS filtering rules set by the company no longer applied when users took their devices outside their network and firewall. Addressing this issue, CloudNow’s Identity and Access Management (IAM) solution was deployed. With its website filtering feature, maintaining DNS filter rules was made possible, even outside the firewall.

With Akku, requests made by users to access any website goes through its DNS filter, which checks for restrictions and blocks unauthorized web pages. Here, the router acts only as the connecting bridge to the internet. This makes it possible to maintain website blocking instructions for devices, disregarding where the users access them from through the internet.

Why is DNS Filtering Outside your Firewall is a Necessity?

It is a vital for all organizations to increase the security of their data by preventing access to malicious websites in CODs. Additionally, this feature ensures that all CODs comply with security standards and remain audit-ready.

Maintain your DNS filter rules even outside your office premises with AKKU’s website filtering feature.

Addressing the Data Security and Audit Worries of a Leading Manufacturer

Company X is a leading automotive hardware manufacturer. In the competitive manufacturing environment, documentation of activity are standardization of processes are critical requirements.

In the case of Company X, this was already in place, and in fact they had achieved ISO certifications for their process-based approach and class-leading quality.

However, certification brought with it a constant stream of audits to ensure that processes were in fact being followed, and standards maintained. This posed a recurring problem, since a single failed audit could result in the loss of certification and loss of business.

The employees of Company X were well equipped – every employee was given an email address, and employees above a certain grade were provided with a laptop and a smartphone as well. But being an ISO-certified enterprise, the security of devices and data were vital.

Diagnosis and Prognosis

Given the background and the critical business impact of a failed audit, potential problem areas were quickly identified, along with solutions.

One of the first problem areas that needed to be addressed was that many employees tended to set weak, easy-to-crack passwords that exposed the company to data security threats, while also failing to comply with ISO standards.

A strong, universal, standards-compliant password policy was necessary to ensure uniformly high security across user accounts.

A mandatory ISO-compliant password policy for all users could easily be set up with Akku.

The next point of concern was the possibility that sensitive business data could be compromised by employees.

The solution to this was to enable employees to access their company email accounts only from the devices provided by the company.

Akku enabled restricting access to company mail only from devices with its SSL Key installed.

Another issue identified was that website browsing restrictions were implemented only on the company’s firewall. Therefore, exposure of company devices to malware and external threats while outside the firewall was a looming worry.

A DNS filter to restrict browsing access even outside the firewall became essential.

Akku’s website filter provided this functionality with powerful control and ease of use. This helped to keep the company’s devices secure, whether they were located within the company firewall or not.

This type of device-based access control offered by Akku seemed to tick all the boxes, but it would fail to serve its purpose if it could be tampered with by a user.

Many legacy solutions built using plugins were found to be vulnerable to misuse – with these solutions, it was possible for users to find a way to circumvent the access control by simply removing the plugin to enable unrestricted access. The device could then be made to appear uncompromised by reinstalling the plugin later. Such a solution was far from water-tight.

With Akku on the other hand, the implementation of a certificate-based architecture overcame this potential challenge. This was because any attempt to tamper with Akku’s certificate would completely restrict access to their authorized services like official email and other SaaS-based applications. Reactivation would require a certificate password, available only with the systems admin.

By enabling easy identification of any attempts to evade the implemented access restrictions, potential leaks were plugged and accountability enforced.

Trial by Fire

The road to full implementation of Akku was a challenging one.

After the problem areas at Company X were identified and Akku was presented as the solution, a PoC was run successfully with 30 users to confirm that all requirements were in fact addressed completely.

With this first hurdle crossed, the client next proposed implementation and testing at their Japanese parent company. Stringent testing on every parameter of Akku’s performance was carried out over a period of several weeks in Japan.

At the end of this process, Akku was approved for the final roll-out across 300 users.