Chugai Pharma Europe protects its intellectual property and patient information using IDAAS

Chugai Pharmaceutical Co Ltd. is Japan’s leading biopharmaceutical company. A member of the Roche Group, Chugai’s mission is to add exceptional value through the creation of innovative medical products and services for the benefit of the medical community and human health around the world. Chugai Pharma Europe Ltd (CPE), is a subsidiary of Chugai Pharmaceutical Co Ltd, responsible for the European input to Chugai’s global product development pipeline. CPE is an integral part of developing product candidates through to Market.

Challenges

Leverage a comprehensive solution to provide SSO, MFA and EMM for Chugai’s distributed infrastructure. Protect the company’s IP as well as the confidential information of patients participating in clinical trials.

At Chugai Pharmaceutical Co Ltd, three different tools were used to provide single sign-on (SSO), enterprise mobility management (EMM) and multifactor authentication (MFA) across the company’s European and US divisions — Chugai Pharma Europe, Ltd. With a limited IT staff in each location, management of these separate solutions created unnecessary strain and considerable expense. Looking to simplify IT processes and save money, the company first considered expanding its relationship with its existing SSO provider.

“We have a mix of cloud and traditional on-premises web apps and we needed to provide secure access to all of them,” says David Howell, IT Associate Director at Chugai Pharma Europe Ltd. “The SSO solution we were using was very effective for cloud- based apps, but lacked any capabilities to address our on-premises applications. And while they also provided an EMM component, there wasn’t the level of control we needed.”

The company was also looking to replace its existing MFA tool with a solution that leveraged users’ mobile devices. “We were really looking for a solution that could address all of our identity management needs across the board,” says Howell. “It would be much easier to manage, easier to support and less expensive in terms of user licenses.”

Last, the company was specifically interested in a cloud-based solution. “Provider-hosted solutions mean lower infrastructure costs to us because we’re not running the services on premises,” says Howell. “So, we needed a cloud-based solution that included SSO, MFA and EMM to protect Chugai’s intellectual property as well as the personal information of patients participating in our clinical trials.”

Results

The company has replaced three costly products with a single, cost-effective solution to fully address SSO, MFA and EMM requirements. Strain on IT resources has been alleviated. Centralized identity management has simplified policy enforcement across all apps and devices. Patient data is protected.

After a detailed testing phase, Chugai rolled out Identity Service to a pilot group of users in the UK. “We had a quick meeting with CyberArk Professional Services where they created our account, talked us through the various settings and trained us to configure apps and policies,” says Howell. “They walked me through the first cloud connector set up and the rest we did ourselves. With just a basic understanding of SAML and WS-Federation, it’s a fairly simple process.”

“The first app we implemented was Office 365 because it was the most fundamental to the company,” says Howell. “We provisioned a couple of additional internal apps and then rolled it out to the rest of the organization by letting Workforce Identity claim federation for the additional domains. It took about two hours for the changes to be replicated throughout the organization and we began seeing users register through the CyberArk dashboard without any issues.”

“One huge benefit is the Workforce Identity integration between PowerShell and Office 365 that makes quarantining and un-quarantining devices from Exchange ActiveSync incredibly simple. You basically just integrate it, the user registers their phone, and the device is automatically un-quarantined. With our previous solution we spent a lot of time doing this manually.

“With CyberArk Workforce Identity, we’ve got one centralized identity management solution that covers our single-sign-on needs across all apps and addresses our EMM and MFA requirements as well.”

– David Howell, Associate Director at Chugai Pharma Europe Ltd.

“That has saved us money and IT resources, and allows us to build very specific policies around application access.” Continued Howell.

“There are so many benefits to centralization. It’s really quite complicated to integrate three separate tools and enable cross communication. We don’t worry about that anymore.”

Now that the UK and Germany roll-outs are complete, the company will soon begin implementation in the US and France. “Beyond that, we’re currently doing demonstrations at the head office in Tokyo, where they’re interested in how we’ve achieved centralized identity management,” says Howell.

Key benefits

• Centralized Identity Management solution that also addresses EMM and MFA requirements
• Money and IT resources savings
• Flexible capabilities to build specific policies for application access
• Robust capabilities to quarantine and quarantine devices from Exchange ActiveSync