Synovus Financial Reduces Identity Management Costs by 80% with Novell

Novell today announced Synovus Financial (Synovus), a $33-billion dollar, multi-chartered financial services holding company, chose Novell solutions to automate user management for more than 6,700 identities, cutting associated IT costs by 80 percent, and reducing password-related helpdesk calls by 40 percent. The results have enabled Synovus to demonstrate compliance mandates like Sarbanes-Oxley and Gramm-Leach-Bliley, reduce risk, lower costs while also making it easier and more secure for its employees to have access to the applications needed to deliver outstanding customer service.

Synovus provides commercial and retail banking, as well as investment services, to customers through 30 banks, 330 offices, and 467 ATMs in Georgia, Alabama, South Carolina, Florida and Tennessee. As a highly regulated institution, Synovus sought to tighten access and security controls to satisfy bank regulators and third-party auditors, while driving down escalating support costs. To do this, Synovus deployed Novell Identity Manager and Novell SecureLogin.

The company wanted to ease operability for its employees in order to create a more efficient front-line experience while also ensuring the integrity of identity management workflows. "We have a dynamic workforce. When a teller moves from one branch to another, for example, we needed a way to tie their credentials to their role so they could quickly get up and running," said Steven Jones, Director of Operational Risk, Synovus Financial. "We liked that we could leverage eDirectory services for the provisioning of third-party banking applications. Now we've automated the entire user provisioning and deprovisioning processes, which now occur in near real time. So, when a user changes roles or moves from one location to another, all of their access rights are updated automatically."

To enforce strong password management and reduce helpdesk calls, Synovus used Novell SecureLogin to provide enterprise single sign-on capabilities. This reduced 70-80 percent of IT helpdesk issues while bringing tighter security across the enterprise.

Using Novell Identity Manager to automate user provisioning and deprovisioning, the company can now synchronize and manage more than 6,700 identities across its HR system, FIS deposit and loan origination system, homegrown banking applications, multiple directories, Novell GroupWise, as well as its corporate intranet and training software.

"The evolving regulatory environment has introduced unprecedented complexity in the world of identity and access management," said Jay Roxe, director of solution marketing, Identity and Security, Novell. "By using Novell's integrated solutions to effectively manage user identities and access, Synovus now has a framework to maintain security and control access while vastly reducing its total cost of ownership."