About the City of Kaufbeuren
The city administration’s responsibilities include resident registration, driver licensing, civil registration, and managing the indoor swimming pool and public library.
The city administration’s IT department provides the technical infrastructure for these diverse municipal services, from server infrastructure, including Active Directory, SQL and Exchange servers, to specialized administrative applications and access management with tenfold.
Customer Opinion
“We are very happy to have chosen tenfold. Without it, we would require three to four additional staff members.”
Oliver Holderried
Head of Systems Engineering, City of Kaufbeuren
Overview
Location
Kaufbeuren, Bavaria, Germany
Industry
Municipal government
No. of IT Users
1,200
IT Staff
37
License
Enterprise
Before tenfold
Before tenfold was introduced, creating and managing user accounts was a largely manual and time-consuming process. One staff member spent almost the entire working week manually creating accounts for new users in Active Directory and across different software systems, with an average of two to three new users joining each week. This was in addition to the many routine changes, such as departmental transfers, retirements and other updates, which also had to be handled manually.
Communication with colleagues was also done manually via emails or sometimes even handwritten notes passed around the office. Tasks and deadlines for creating user accounts were entered individually in Outlook.
Why IGA? Cyberattacks as a driving force
In recent years, cybersecurity has become a priority as the threat landscape continues to grow. City administrations have faced an increasing number of targeted attack attempts, for example through malicious email attachments or fraudulent calls with the intention to introduce malware.
This is particularly critical for municipal administrations, which hold highly sensitive information about their residents across a wide range of areas. In addition to addresses and biometric data like fingerprints, this includes information on family statuses, social welfare and bank account details, as well as information about legal or social disputes. A successful attack could therefore result in a serious data breach.
In view of these risks, the city of Kaufbeuren is increasingly investing in technical safeguards such as application control, staff training and IGA to prevent data leaks and system compromise.
An IGA solution helps to minimize the attack surface available to potential intruders. If an attacker manages to bypass the firewall and take over a user account, they can access only the data available to that compromised account. It is therefore essential that employees have only the permissions they need to do their jobs, no more and no less.
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Requirements for an IGA solution
The City of Kaufbeuren therefore began looking for a suitable identity governance and administration solution. The following requirements and objectives were defined in advance:
1. Automation of permissions
With automation, processes should be optimized, accelerated and simplified.
Permissions should be granted and revoked on a schedule, thereby …
… eliminating the need track permissions manually, e.g. through calendar entries.
2. User lifecycles
The IGA system should support onboarding and offboarding, role changes, temporary access rights and other aspects of the user lifecycle.
All access processes should be managed through workflows.
3. Minimizatuion of attack surface
More precise access control should minimize the attack surface for potential cyberattacks.
4. Compliance
Municipal administrations are required to hold certain certifications. Many of these require a level of access control and visibility that is difficult to achieve without an IGA solution.
5. Simple communication and notifications
Affected employees should receive automated emails informing them of changes.
IT staff and departments should also be notified of changes automatically.
6. Cost effectiveness
The solution had to comply with procurement requirements and fit within the municipal budget.
The road to tenfold
Before discovering tenfold, the city had already assessed four other IGA solutions as part of a structured evaluation, including enterprise solutions designed for very large organizations.
The main priority was to find a solution that could effectively manage user lifecycles. tenfold met this and all the other functional requirements, while offering excellent value for money. As a result, the Vienna-based solution emerged as the clear choice.
Implementation
The period from initial installation to go-live was two months, whereby the setup of resources in tenfold presented the most time-consuming stage.
Step 1: Initial installation
The initial installation of tenfold was completed quickly and smoothly within three days, with assistance from tenfold support. Active Directory and all file servers were connected at this stage.
Step 2: Setup of resources and developing an Imperium interface
The next step was to set up all the resources relevant to assigning permissions. This required the most effort, as the City of Kaufbeuren uses around 250 specialized administrative applications for tasks such as driver licensing, youth welfare and traffic management. Before tenfold, every new employee had to be given access to the relevant applications manually. This ate up a considerable amount of staff time and was also very prone to errors. Whenever a user was granted the permission they needed, an email was automatically generated to notify the team. The team then had to switch to Matrix42’s Unified Endpoint Management (UEM) software deployment solution, assign the software to the relevant computer and approve the installation.
To make this process more efficient, the city administration and tenfold decided to develop a direct interface between tenfold and Matrix42 UEM. tenfold handled the development work, while the city provided a test system. The result was a plugin that automatically transfers information to UEM.
Since then, all specialized administrative applications can be represented as individual resources in tenfold and assigned to new employees when they join. Resources are assigned through roles that contain the appropriate resources, i.e. specialized procedures. Not only does this simplify the assignment process, but it also makes it much less prone to errors.
Step 3: User import
All users were then imported into tenfold, allowing user management to be fully transferred to the system.
How tenfold is used and which systems are connected
The organization uses tenfold in a variety of ways, particularly to automate and standardize IT processes. Numerous systems have already been connected, significantly simplifying day-to-day IT operations.
tenfold is used for …
… setting up resources
… creating and managing user profiles
… requesting access and permissions, e.g. for Microsoft Teams, via self-sevice
Connected systems
1. Active Directory (AD)
Central directory for user accounts
User account creation and management through tenfold
2. Exchange / Outlook
Automatic setup and assignment of mailboxes
Management of shared mailbox and calendar permissions through scripts
3. File servers
Management of access rights through AD
Integration using tenfold’s standard mechanisms
4. PowerShell scripts developed in-house
Additional automation through the PowerShell plugin, such as automatic certificate installation based on team memberships
Implemented by the in-house development team
5. Matrix42 (UEM)
Integrated in user management
Used for license and asset assignments in day-to-day operations
6. Email workflows
Used for specialized administrative applications which are not directly integrated
Support for manual or partially automated processes through email notifications
7. Microsoft 365
Teams is currently the only cloud service in use
Synchronization of user accounts from on-premises AD to Microsoft 365
8. Access reviews for external service providers
Use of the access review feature to control access of external accounts
Regular access reviews, e.g. for service providers working at indoor swimming pools outside IT support hours
Improvements for data owners
With tenfold, many decisions have been delegated from IT to the relevant departments, speeding up access management processes and reducing errors. Data owners also benefit from improved visibility. They can now see at a glance which tasks remain open and require approval. Before tenfold, many requests were overlooked or missed, meaning they were either not processed or delayed.
“With tenfold, data owners always have a clear overview of pending tasks and approvals, allowing them to plan their work in a structured and efficient way. For them, tenfold delivers real added value.“
Oliver Holderried, Head of Systems Engineering, City of Kaufbeuren
Future plans with tenfold
The City of Kaufbeuren plans to significantly expand its use of tenfold. The following initiatives are the main priorities:
1. Expanding the self-service portal: Self-service was initially enabled for Microsoft Teams. The aim is to add further applications so that users can request access independently, fully digitizing the process and eliminating manual and paper-based procedures.
2. Using the Import Plugin to connect HR software: This will allow user accounts to be created automatically (e.g. when new employees join), as well as deactivated automatically (e.g. upon retirement or when leaving the organization altogether).
3. Expanding access reviews: The access review feature will be extended to additional accounts to uphold the principle of least privilege and maintain compliance with the applicable regulations.
Conclusion
The City of Kaufbeuren’s assessment of tenfold is consistently positive. Since its implementation, numerous user management processes have been successfully automated, thereby significantly reducing the workload for the IT department. With growing demands and higher staff turnover, managing these processes manually would now be almost impossible.
tenfold’s flexibility has made it possible to implement tailored solutions that meet the specific requirements of a municipal administration.
The combination of automation, extensibility and the ability to support future needs makes tenfold a central component of the City of Kaufbeuren’s digital IT strategy.
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