BeyondTrust > Case Studies > DSM Improves Security Across the Enterprise

DSM Improves Security Across the Enterprise

Company Size

1,000+

Region

Europe

Country

Netherlands

Product

PowerBroker for Desktops

Tech Stack

Microsoft Windows

Implementation Scale

Enterprise-wide Deployment

Impact Metrics

Cost Savings
Productivity Improvements

Technology Category

Application Infrastructure & Middleware - API Integration & Management

Applicable Industries

Pharmaceuticals

Applicable Functions

Business Operation
Discrete Manufacturing

Use Cases

Cybersecurity
Predictive Maintenance

Services

System Integration

About The Customer

DSM is a global company active in nutritional and pharma ingredients, performance materials, and industrial chemicals. The company develops, produces, and sells innovative products and services that help improve the quality of life. DSM’s products are used in a wide range of end-markets and applications, such as human and animal nutrition and health, personal care, pharmaceuticals, automotive and transport, coatings and paint, housing, and electrics & electronics. DSM Nutritional Products, formerly Roche Vitamins and Fine Chemicals, is the world’s leading supplier of vitamins and carotenoids to the feed, food, pharmaceutical, and cosmetic industries. DSM has annual sales of over €8 billion and employs 18,000 people worldwide. The company is headquartered in the Netherlands, with locations in Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia, and the Americas.

The Challenge

DSM was working on an internal project to migrate 18,000 desktops from Windows NT4 to Windows XP. A new group was created to design the XP desktop environment to be as secure as possible. The group identified a critical component to improving security was to remove local administrator rights from end users and to enforce a Least Privilege environment. To achieve this, DSM set a policy that all end users must log on as standard users without elevated privileges. However, DSM relies on a long list of applications that require administrative privileges to do business. If end users no longer had administrative rights, these applications would not work. Additionally, DSM’s sales force must be able to manage certain settings, such as connecting to local printers and configuring an IP address when connecting to a new wireless network. Without administrator privileges, end users would not be able to make necessary system changes when they traveled.

The Solution

As DSM was moving to a new Active Directory environment with 18,000 end users running XP, BeyondTrust Privilege Manager was the solution to their problems. BeyondTrust Privilege Manager would allow DSM to remove administrator rights from all end users, while still allowing users to run critical business applications that required administrative privileges. Additionally, laptop and traveling users would be able to make authorized system changes despite not having administrative privileges. DSM deployed PowerBroker for Desktops enterprise-wide to all 18,000 users. PowerBroker for Desktops has allowed DSM to meet their goals of creating a secure desktop environment while allowing end users to continue to run all required applications. It has exceeded expectations by reducing the number of help desk calls and increasing end user and administrator productivity.

Operational Impact

End users no longer know or need to know the local administrator password, reducing the potential of any malicious activity.
End user computers have significantly less malware as a result of running with administrative privileges, while still being able to run all required applications, connect to local printers and install approved software.
These benefits have resulted in fewer help desk calls.