“The difference is night and day. With GroupID our Active Directory Groups are what they should be – up-to-date and secure.”

Jon CoveyPrincipal Enterprise System Engineer

About

Alaska Airlines is a major American airline company which is headquartered in SeaTac, Washington. The company employs over 22,000 people and is ranked by J.D. Power and Associates for having the best customer satisfaction rate for 12 consecutive years. Being a renowned airline company, Alaska’s route system spans 117 destinations in the United States, Canada, Costa Rica, Belize, and Mexico.

Alaska Airlines has grown leaps and bounds over the years. The company is among the pioneers who started offering online tickets and remote check-ins to customers to make the travel experience easier. To continue its legacy of innovation, Alaska Airlines needs a tool that can take care of its IT administrative tasks so that the company can focus on its actual goals.

Background

Before Netwrix GroupID, Alaska Airlines was unable to monitor its groups in its Directory. The company was struggling to clean up the mess in its directory due to the excessive number of unwanted and obsolete groups. They had no way to make sure that only the necessary groups stay in the directory because the group owners could not review and attest the group attributes and memberships.

Alaska Airlines required a tool that allowed them to audit their directory groups. They wanted to make sure that group owners reviewed and attested the group attributes and memberships before renewal so that only the necessary groups stayed in the directory. With GroupID, Alaska Airlines was able to enhance its security by ensuring that obsolete AD groups are automatically removed from the directory and all their permissions are revoked immediately.

Challenges

Audit Active Directory Groups

With over 22,000 employees working at Alaska Airlines, the company wanted a tool that could easily audit their Active Directory groups so that they could clean up the group glut and make their environment more secure.

Solution: GroupID Self-Service

The Self-Service module of GroupID enabled Alaska Airlines to empower its users to manage their groups themselves. End-users could now update their profile information and attest to their organizational structure more conveniently than before.

Review and Attest Group Memberships

Alaska Airlines wanted to remove unwanted and obsolete groups from its Active Directory and the only sensible way to do so was to give users the power to review and attest groups so that only the necessary groups stayed in the directory.

Solution: GroupID Self-Service

The group lifecycle feature of Netwrix GroupID Self-Service enforced group owners to review and attest group attributes and memberships after regular intervals so that only necessary groups were renewed and unwanted groups do not exist in the directory. GroupID automatically expires and deletes unneeded groups from the directory if they are not attested by the owners, ensuring that groups do not outlive the purpose of their creation.

Send Automatic Alerts to Group Owners

Since Alaska Airlines were looking to remove the clutter of unneeded groups from its directory, it required a feature that would send automated emails to group owners for renewal and attestation.

Solution: GroupID Self-Service

This capability was also provided by GroupID Self-Service. After a set time, groups are queued for expiration. GroupID automatically sends emails to group owners so that they can review the group memberships and permissions. If the owner attests and approves the group’s memberships, the group is renewed, and if the group owner does not attest and approve the group’s attributes, then GroupID expires the group and revokes its access rights and permissions.