Honeywell Leaps to Cloud, Delivers Resiliency and Risk-Based MFA

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Challenge

Honeywell sought to overcome downtime, data loss, and functionality issues from on-premises solutions, 24/7 reliability, enhanced security, and a frictionless user experience across 1,000+ apps.

Results

Integrated 1,600 apps with 99.99% uptime, reduced call centre calls by 30%, bolstered security with risk-based MFA, and improved UX, while freeing up IAM resources for strategic initiatives.

Objective

Honeywell aimed to address C-suite and business stakeholder concerns regarding resiliency and redundancy, targeting 99.99% availability for its Identity Security service that supports revenue-generating applications and services. Their previous on-premises software setup presented challenges in avoiding outages during bug fixes, upgrades, and patches, often due to dependencies on other on-premise services.. Consequently, a key objective was to transition away from hosting such a critical service in its on-premises global data centres, as the SSO team was significantly resource-challenged by ongoing maintenance activities.

Furthermore, Honeywell sought to continuously enhance its security posture by implementing a risk-based Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) solution that could adapt to the ever-evolving security landscape while providing a frictionless experience for users to combat credential fatigue. The company also had an ambitious goal of sunsetting its call centre through improved and self-service capabilities. Given Honeywell’s four distinct business groups and a growing portfolio of 1,000 applications, another critical objective was to establish a consistent identity and security protocol that was scalable and flexible enough to meet the diverse needs of each business unit.

Challenge

Honeywell faced significant challenges with its on-premises identity infrastructure, struggling to avoid outages during bug fixes, upgrades, and patches due to dependencies on other on-premises services, which impacted its goal of achieving 99.99% availability for revenue-generating applications.. The SSO team was overstretched managing the existing software, prompting Honeywell to seek a cloud solution to offload critical service hosting from its global data centers. Additionally, the company needed to evolve its security best practices, particularly by implementing risk-based MFA to adapt to security challenges and provide a smoother user experience, reducing frustration from constant authentication prompts. Managing change across four distinct global business units, each with unique needs for identity and security protocols, and integrating over 1,000 applications consistently, posed a major challenge.

Identity is core. Like, #IdentityIsCore. I absolutely think that it’s like a superpower in the CISO’s arsenal. Identity is at the absolute forefront of what we’re doing.

Davis Arora

Senior Director of Cybersecurity, Honeywell

Solution

Honeywell chose to leap with PingOne Advanced Services (P1 AS), a cloud solution specifically designed to offload product and infrastructure operations from customers' IAM and security teams. This strategic adoption freed up 40-60% of Honeywell's IAM resource bandwidth, allowing their teams to focus on more strategic efforts that improve both workforce and customer experiences. Beyond reclaiming lost time, P1 AS also reduces the total cost of ownership by saving significant IT operational costs, while ensuring effective protection through the latest automatic bug fixes and upgrades without requiring effort from Honeywell's team.

To further enhance its security posture, Honeywell also deployed PingOne Protect and PingOne Risk, which are instrumental in evaluating the level of security risk for user sign-on events based on device profiles and transaction information. These solutions provide Honeywell with a clearer view of various risk signals, such as attempted password changes, unauthorised account usage, and account sharing, enabling them to catch risky behaviours early. Additionally, Honeywell is leveraging the power of DaVinci, applying it to conduct device validation for 100 of their most critical applications. DaVinci performs a combination of checks, including verifying credentials, validating location, analysing signals, and assessing device posture to ensure the legitimacy of the device accessing the application, thus taking security "one notch further" to protect their "crown jewels."

The implementation also focused on simplifying processes for application owners, with Honeywell creating an easy, automated onboarding process via an internal website, providing 24x7 team support, which helped accelerate application owner adoption and ensured all new applications were integrated with the same identity and security services.

30%

Reduction in call center calls

Results

Honeywell has experienced numerous benefits and significant results from its adoption of PingOne Advanced Services. They migrated 1,000 applications in just nine months, and as of June 2024, a total of 1,600 applications are integrated with PingOne Advanced Services, all leveraging risk-based MFA and delivering 99.99% uptime. This high availability means hundreds of applications remain operational during upgrades and patches, allowing internal teams to focus on more revenue-generating operations. Honeywell also achieved a 30% reduction in call centre calls by deploying self-service password resets and changes, demonstrating significant progress towards their goal of eliminating costly and time-consuming helpdesk operations. The implementation of adaptive and risk-based MFA has significantly improved the user experience, reducing user friction and frustration by not constantly asking for step-up authentication unless risky behaviour is detected. This has been particularly beneficial for customers, ensuring a smoother journey and preventing them from seeking other vendors. Furthermore, the strengthened security with PingOne Protect and PingOne Risk allows Honeywell to proactively catch risky behaviours like shared accounts and false passwords, enhancing their fight against fraud. Honeywell now delivers a unified customer experience across its business sectors, with features like fingerprint and facial recognition for login, contributing to consistency from app to app and greater user satisfaction.

Industry

Media & Telco

Solutions Used

Workforce Identity

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