Imprivata Creates a Single Source of Truth, Streamlines ITAM & Cybersecurity with Lansweeper
Imprivata is an IT security company based in Lexington, Massachusetts. Founded in 2002, the company develops and sells the OneSign Platform for securing employee access to desktops, networks and applications using single sign-on, primarily to healthcare clients. Imprivata’s access management solutions are purpose-built to solve healthcare’s unique workflow, security, and compliance challenges.
In 2018, Imprivata’s Director of Worldwide IT Infrastructure and SaaS Operations, Jesse Myers, reached out to Lansweeper for help with creating a comprehensive IT Asset Inventory, which enabled effective management of its 8,000+ devices, helped reduce asset sprawl, and eliminated security and compliance vulnerabilities caused by outdated software.
Goals
- Maintain a single source of truth for all IT hardware and software asset data
- Identify software vulnerabilities that could lead to security incidents
- Monitor and validate data from the other systems to provide checks and balances
- Easily run reports and execute software updates to eliminate vulnerabilities
Results
- Enabled rapid identification of outdated assets
- Reduced asset sprawl and increased security across the IT infrastructure
- Ensured machines used by remote workers are secure, compliant and up-to-date
- Provided actionable insights to help eliminate security threats
«Compared with other solutions we evaluated, Lansweeper provided the widest coverage across all types of devices. The speed of deployment and quick immediate ROI was impressive.»
Decentralized Healthcare IT Requires Reliable Asset Management
Imprivata’s flagship product, OneSign, is a platform for securing employee access to desktops, networks and applications via single sign-on. According to Myers, these capabilities are particularly important in the increasingly decentralized healthcare environment. «It’s my job to ensure all departments have the technical tools and services they need to do their jobs, while at the same time managing costs and finding opportunities to improve efficiencies,» he said.
In addition to the company’s SaaS infrastructure, Myers’ team manages about 8,000 devices. «Managing the entire lifecycle of an asset was a regular challenge for us,» he said. Although the software asset management systems he had in place were tracking inventory and versions, there was no backup if they failed. «We had no underlying source of truth, and we needed a system to monitor and validate data from the other systems to provide checks and balances.»
According to Al Colon, Director of Information Security and Corporate Compliance at Imprivata, not knowing who owned the assets was problematic. «The company’s Software Engineers would pass around old test machines, which would appear on vulnerability lists, and it was critical to identify owners if their devices were vulnerable or had outdated software that could become a security threat,» he said.
Colon, who is responsible for strategic leadership of Imprivata’s information security program, added that the team had tried multiple Microsoft products with varying degrees of success, as well as systems such as Manage Engine, but coverage was limited. «Much of the information was still kept on spreadsheets,» he said. «We had endpoint protection tools that provided some insights, but only if all of the assets had our security tools installed.»
As such point solutions all have their own data sources for isolated IT use cases, which leads to data inconsistency and excessive operational overhead. What’s more, since data cannot be shared between systems, duplication is inevitable. Data management occurs in silos and therefore cannot deliver actionable insights. They needed a solution for gathering data across the organization that could be leveraged for any IT scenario as a single source of truth. Given their heavy workload, a solution that was intuitive and required little training to get up and running was critical, as was the ability to run reports and perform software updates.
An Easy Decision for Executive Management
«Compared with other solutions we evaluated, Lansweeper provided the widest coverage across all types of devices,» he said, adding that it could also be used to facilitate Imprivata’s product build lifecycle. «The speed of deployment and quick immediate ROI was impressive.»
Myers said that convincing upper management to approve the Lansweeper implementation was easy, once they saw what the tool could do. «The vast amount of data Lansweeper collects really helped us sell the product,» he said. «It was immediately apparent to the CFO that the tool would provide rapid and significant ROI. The fact that anyone with almost no training can quickly learn to run reports and perform simple software updates was icing on the cake.»
Lansweeper Provided Instant Visibility, Rapid Issue Remediation
At the outset, Colon had been concerned about installing another security agent on assets and the associated overhead, but with Lansweeper, that wasn’t an issue. «Lansweeper is agentless, easy to install and maintain, and provides much broader coverage than any other solution we evaluated,» he said.
According to Myers, Lansweeper provided instant visibility across the IT infrastructure and has become an indispensable tool for his team. Lansweeper rapidly gathers hardware and software information on all devices across the IT environment, creating the foundation for ITAM 2.0 — an IT asset system of record that can be leveraged across multiple scenarios to support any IT use case or business goal with accurate and always up-to-date IT inventory data. Lansweeper can be integrated with software asset management, cloud migration and cybersecurity tools, among others, to provide a single source of truth for data validation and verification across systems, enabling comprehensive management and simplifying data governance. Lansweeper also encompasses a ticket-based helpdesk system and capabilities for software updates on target devices.
«Lansweeper should be everywhere, we layer tools on top of it, including our endpoint security solution, DLM, SIEM and ingress/egress security monitoring tools.»
Myers said Lansweeper was particularly helpful with troubleshooting an issue that was impacting upgrades to one of Imprivata’s products. «The service would report it was updated, but not all files would be changed,» he said. «We were spending exorbitant amounts of time trying to troubleshoot the issue, to no avail. In literally minutes, Lansweeper provided the data our engineers needed to fix the problem.»
Colon said Lansweeper has been useful for keeping track of outdated or vulnerable software versions on user devices. «With Lansweeper, we can maintain a complete software inventory and take immediate action to update any old versions that could open the door for a breach,» he said.
An End to Asset Sprawl – and a More Secure Infrastructure
Lansweeper has helped Imprivata in several critical areas, including compliance, asset management and inventory optimization. «Lansweeper enables us to rapidly identify any hardware or software assets that are out of compliance, so we can take action and avoid any security incidents,» said Colon, who added that security tool compliance was also a critical capability. «Our entire infrastructure is definitely more secure as a result of implementing the tool.»
«Lansweeper has helped us reign in asset sprawl across our infrastructure, which not only improves our security posture but reduces costs»
«Lansweeper has helped us reign in asset sprawl across our infrastructure, which not only improves our security posture but reduces costs,» Myers said. «Plus, we now have an easy way to search and validate data across all of the organization’s IT assets.»
Finally, Lansweeper’s ability to push software updates out to networked devices saves time and helps Imprivata support remote working initiatives that have become essential to operations since the onset of Covid-19. «Lansweeper ensures our remote workforce remains secure and compliant, and has access to the most recent versions of the software they use every day,» said Colon.
An Eye toward the Cloud
Colon said the cloud will be a key focus for Imprivata’s IT organization moving forward, and is looking to Lansweeper to support that initiative. «As we continue to look at ways to move our security toolset to the cloud and become non-dependent on physical hardware, we’ll be leaning on Lansweeper’s vision for cloud-based access to IT asset data and insights,» he said. «Leveraging Lansweeper as a single source of truth will inform a number of IT use cases, enabling our team to make data-driven decisions with confidence.»