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TV broadcaster Belo Corp. simplifies operations with consistent identities

Identity management is ingrained in the business now and people expect it. Identity Automation has made it easier on us to use it. Brenda Buckalew, Senior Director of Technology Enterprise Systems

Belo at a glance
The Challenge

Introduction

Belo Corp. traces its roots back to 1842 with The Daily Develop new IT systems from the ground-up News newspaper in Galveston, Texas. The company grew Establish a single authoritative source of identity its business with newspapers and, later, radio and teleinformation for all employees vision stations in 1922. In 2008, the media powerhouse Create an identity management system to secure completed a spin-off of their 4 newspapers into a brand access to a variety of diverse business applications new, completely separate publicly traded company. Today Belo Corp. operates 20 television stations and multiThe Identity Automation Solution ple regional and local news channels in 15 locations A custom solution built around Workday and Active across the U.S. Directory provisions users and controls access to IT and business applications The split had a significant impact on the information DSS synchronizes identities and passwords among technology (IT) systems and the people who support disparate systems them. Most of the existing IT staff went to the new com Dynamic groups establish role based access control pany, a business with the more complex IT needs. Other for SharePoint IT staff members, including Brenda Buckalew, Senior Di Identity Automation continues to provide managed rector of Technology Enterprise Systems, stayed with Belo. services

The Results

Following the split, Belo had to build out a new IT deA fully operational identity and access management partment, says Buckalew. We had lots of projects to solution was in place within six weeks get done, one of which was identity and access manageA single authoritative source for identity drives ac- ment. For a time we continued to use the IAM system cess to all systems operated by the newspaper company, but we needed to Employee self-service reduces the burden on IT get our own system in place for the sole use of our company, Belo. Increase integration with SharePoint and manage group access Use workflow to develop more automated access to systems, servers and applications Use ARMS and DSS to control access to niche business systems

Future Plans

The Business Challenge

The newspaper company uses a unified identity management system based on Sun ONE technology. Buckalew participated in this systems implementation in 2006. It took six consultants over a year to get that system up and running, and it never really attained the full

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Identity, Data and Access Management Specialists www.identityautomation.com : info@identityautomation.com

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TV broadcaster Belo Corp. simplifies operations with consistent identities

functionality we had wanted, says Buckalew. The complexity made me afraid of some of the larger IAM solutions. I needed to get something implemented for Belo quickly. At the time, Belo used PeopleSoft as its HR system. Buckalew wanted PeopleSoft to be the authoritative system for employee identity information, and to have access to other enterprise applications based on identities, organizational relationships and roles in the HR system. Belo needed to secure access to a variety of business applications, including the mission-critical niche systems that run the on-air scheduling. It also was important to provide temporary contractor and guest worker access under the sponsorship of Belo employees. We use the sponsorship module of ARMS in two ways, says Buckalew. Our television stations have a lot of freelance workers, so we use the sponsorship module to set them up in our systems for a maximum of three months. Anyone in the company can sponsor a freelance worker, and the employee must reattest that guest worker access is still needed when the time is up. This way, we dont leave access open for someone who no longer works with Belo. We also have a lot of internal systems that are supported by third party vendors, says Buckalew. These systems help run the stations, and we sometimes need vendor intervention if something goes wrong. We use the ARMS sponsorship module to create vendor accounts so they can access just the specific system they need to support. The sponsorship module helps Belo follow best practices for temporary and restricted access to systems. Buckalew appreciates the self-service request function. Anyone can be a sponsor, but we tightly control who authorizes access. The features of DSS are another reason Belo selected Identity Automation. We use BLC, which is our Active Directory domain (named after our NYSE Stock Ticker), for almost everything, explains Buckalew. But we also have a few other resource domains that serve specific business applications. We use DSS to provision users into those domains and to synchronize passwords between them and BLC. Its not single sign-on, which is too complex, but it simplifies local security into the niche domains.

Why Identity Automation?

We talked to several IAM companies, and Identity Automation said they could put in a solution within six weeks. This was a real plus, says Buckalew. My team had a lot of IT projects on its plate at the time. We liked that Identity Automation would set up the servers, configure the solution, and manage everything until we are ready to take over all the support and future development for ourselves.

Identity Automation proposed an enterprise solution based on two of its core products: Access Request Management System (ARMS) and Data Synchronization System (DSS). Through integration with PeopleSoft (which eventually was swapped out for the SaaS application Workday) and Microsoft Active Directory, ARMS and DSS would drive full identity and access management to all other IT and business applications within Belo Corporation. Whats more, ARMS would provide self-service facil- Solution Deployment ities to employees to manage their own passwords and to sponsor access for non-employee workers. We worked closely with a consultant from Identity Automation to capture all our requirements. Most

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Identity, Data and Access Management Specialists www.identityautomation.com : info@identityautomation.com

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TV broadcaster Belo Corp. simplifies operations with consistent identities

important is that we wanted to provision and deprovi- The Results sion from our HR application, Buckalew explains. We also had some mandatory groups we wanted to place Our IT people no longer have to go into our directory people in, especially for access to documents on Share- system to create employee identities for the computer Point. systems, says Buckalew. Everything now flows from our HR system, which gives us a standard creation proThe Identity Automation consultant determined that Ac- cess. We can identify who a person is in every applicative Directory would work well as the originating directo- tion because we use the employee ID as the single comry and it would be able to provision to all the other re- mon key. New employees can be productive more quicksource directories. He brought up ARMS and DSS and set ly because we can provision all their access based on up all the rules and automated workflow to have infor- who they are, where they work, and what their role is. mation flow from PeopleSoft through Active Directory And from an audit perspective, weve implemented a and into all other necessary systems. According to Buck- best practice to automatically deprovision someone alew, We met daily with the Identity Automation con- when they leave the company. sultant to discuss what he had done and to test everything thoroughly. He really understood our requirements Im very pleased with everything Identity Automation and completed the implementation in just six weeks. has set up for us, Buckalew says. Identity manageThis was so much faster and easier than the Sun ONE ment is ingrained in the business now and people eximplementation had been. pect it. Identity Automation has made it easier on IT to use it. Its common for Belo employees to migrate from one station to another. Once they move, their accounts need Future Plans to move to their new station and they must be assigned into the appropriate groups for the new station and re- Buckalew wants to focus more on SharePoint integration moved from the groups at their old station. Belos Active and managing SharePoint groups through the IAM sysDirectory solution is very delegated; administrators at tem. Were also setting up Identity Automation to work every station control their own users. The companys with our one-off systems, like the one that automates IAM solution fully supports and automates the move- putting the advertisements and other spots on the air ment of employees and the groups they belong to for and running the shows, says Buckalew. Were integrating these disparate systems with DSS to do user and access to applications. password synchronization between the systems and to Two years after the initial IAM implementation, Belo re- improve security. placed PeopleSoft with Workday as the authoritative HR database. Identity Automation smoothly transitioned the Identity Automation is still providing managed services employee provisioning from PeopleSoft to Workday and to provide support, system upgrades and special enpropagated all necessary changes throughout the IAM hancements. Buckalew intends to train her team to set up the dynamic groups and workflow for themselves, system. but well continue to work with Identity Automation consultants when we have to integrate with other

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TV broadcaster Belo Corp. simplifies operations with consistent identities

systems, she adds.

About Belo Corp.

Television company Belo Corp. (NYSE: BLC) owns and operates 20 television stations (nine in the top 25 markets) and their associated websites. Belo stations, which include affiliations with ABC, CBS, NBC, FOX, and the CW, reach more than 14 percent of U.S. television households in 15 highly-attractive markets. Belo stations rank first or second in nearly all of their local markets. Additional information is available at www.belo.com.

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Identity, Data and Access Management Specialists www.identityautomation.com : info@identityautomation.com