Symantec™ Corporation is a global leader in infrastructure software, enabling businesses and consumers to have confidence in a connected world.

The company helps customers protect their infrastructure, information and interactions by delivering software and services that address risks to security, availability, compliance and performance. Headquartered in Cupertino, Calif., Symantec has operations in more than 40 countries.

“Symantec saved up to $10 for every $1 invested in HID’s SAFE platform. We solved and automated physical security card access management and compliance regulations challenges with HID’s innovative solutions.”

Manager, Global Security, Symantec Corporation

The Challenges

Symantec was looking for a way to streamline and automate its global physical security business processes associated with compliance and physical access control systems (PACS) management. Symantec operates in over 40 countries and has over 40,000+ physical access cardholders. Their physical security infrastructure included Lenel, GE, AMAG, other smaller PACS, as well as video / DVR and life safety systems - dispersed and disjointed at various worldwide locations.

Routine tasks like employee/ contractor on / off boarding processes, changes in cardholder profiles, and Sarbanes Oxley (SOX) compliance reporting were all performed manually. These processes were error-laden, requiring regular intervention from physical and IT security staff to remediate problems and exceptions, consuming time and resources.

A proprietary, homegrown, and costly software patchwork solution served as a “Band-Aid” to solve individual pain points but Symantec security operations knew they needed a security platform that would provide an enterprise management layer, work with the existing physical security infrastructure, integrate with corporate and IT systems, and solve critical pain points associated with global compliance and card access management.

Benefits of HID SAFE™ Enterprise:

SAFE also automated all tasks and personnel record changes based on security policies.

With SAFE, Symantec was able to create/ assign access and disable personnel record in their Lenel & GE PACS based on Symantec’s identity management policies. Symantec could also:

• Create cases in their propriety, homegrown system for security operation tracking 
• Send email confirmations to all stakeholders
• Auto-create email-ready audit reports and send via Email
• Correlate PACS data in real time
• Alert security operations if records were modified in PACS without proper authorization
• Provide a common repository for Security Audits & Reporting

The SAFE SAFE-CR module provided a way for Symantec to enforce governance by automating compliance policies and business rules across diverse and disjointed PACS, creating a transparent, traceable and repeatable real time global compliance process. SAFE automated cardholder administration and reporting across various PACS for Sarbanes Oxley (SOX) compliance and provided monitoring and enforcement of business controls (in real time) across the global PACS infrastructure. SAFE also let decision makers across all Symantec’s corporate levels monitor access, uncover trends and present information in user-friendly, boardroom quality reports.

HID’s SAFE solution solved Symantec’s PACS management pains and enabled Symantec with a framework to support future enhancements such as disaster recovery, smartcards, background checks, visitor management, building automation, and more.