eTrust Audit Streamlines Audit Data Collection Process

ICT Group, Inc., headquartered in Newtown, PA, is a leading global provider of outsourced customer management services supporting the sales, marketing and customer service needs of large, multi-national corporations in several high-growth vertical markets. For the past two years, ICT has made Forbes’ list of 200 Best Small Companies in America. In addition, in 2002, ICT was named on Fortune’s 100 Fastest Growing Companies in America list.

	Before implementing the eTrust Audit software, collecting audit data had taken up to 16 to 20 hours. Now it takes about 10 to 15 minutes.
		Bob Daily , Vice President , Contact Center Infrastructure ICT Group

More than 11,000 customer sales and service representatives working in 47+ customer contact centers throughout the United States, Europe, Canada, Australia and the Caribbean access data for ICT Group’s clients on a daily basis, supporting their sales, service and marketing programs.

Ensuring Security
Performing external audits is a key component in ICT Group’s ability to attract and retain satisfied clients. “By performing audits, our clients are assured that ICT is using a secure and reliable site to remotely serve its customers. For a number of our clients, we access data directly from their own host server sites through a remote network interconnection,” explained Bob Daily, Vice President of Contact Center Infrastructure, who is responsible for ICT Group’s IT support and corporate IT security.

To properly conduct the audits, data must be collected across multiple communication platforms, which can be a daunting task. Because ICT runs very disparate systems, including AIX and SCO, UNIX and Oracle, as well as Windows 2000, NT and 98 desktops, the company runs many different applications with unique log-ins, so it was difficult to consolidate the information.

The task had to be performed manually, with multiple specialists for each of the various platforms separately collecting and interpreting the data. “With our previous system, when we were externally audited,” Daily said, “we had several systems administrators collecting all of our data records, which would then need to be consolidated and categorized by individual client. The process was cumbersome and time consuming.” The burden of collecting the data—in terms of both cost and labor hours—intensified after September 11, 2001, with the heightened awareness of cyber-crime and cyber-terrorism prompting a sudden surge in audits.

Automating With eTrust
With eTrust Audit from Computer Associates International, Inc. (CA), ICT Group was able to streamline and automate its entire audit process. According to Daily, “We have a corporate security analyst who is dedicated to ensuring the confidentiality and integrity of our client data. Before implementing the eTrust Audit software, collecting audit data had taken up to 16 to 20 hours. Now it takes about 10 to 15 minutes.”

ICT Group discovered eTrust Audit while in the process of evaluating and implementing an overall administrative and security system, considering such products as eTrust Admin and eTrust Access Control. Although the company wasn’t necessarily looking for a data consolidation tool at the beginning of its security assessment, once they saw the functionality and capabilities of the eTrust Audit package, ICT made this a priority, helping them to better respond to the increased requests for external audits.

Implementation occurred over two days. “The product is very easy to install and configure,” said Daily. “Right now, eTrust Audit is deployed on all of ICT’s authentication machines, as well as on our critical business servers, domains and UNIX production boxes. We began seeing the payback immediately and the results were impressive. Because of the way eTrust Audit handles our client records, we have enjoyed cost savings and additional freed resources, benefiting our clients and ensuring a more secure and confidential data interface, as well as a streamlined, more improved data audit process.”

Unicenter® Integration
After eTrust Audit was deployed, ICT Group found other ways to put it to work, including passing the eTrust Audit records off to the Unicenter framework and deploying software through Unicenter® Software Delivery to new workstations connected to the domain. eTrust Audit has made it easier for the company to makes changes and add new clients and customers, without redefining parameters or creating new event logs. The data for new clients is automatically transmitted to eTrust Audit, making it possible for ICT to deploy unique client security platforms in a matter of 10 to 15 minutes, instead of hours.

Over time, Daily expects ICT Group to leverage eTrust Audit as an added value for attracting new clients and programs. His systems staff plans to educate the company’s operations, sales and marketing personnel, letting them know the added benefits of this new security system, as well as the additional security and “comfort” this functionality brings to their clients.

“Operating as an ‘extremely reliable and secure outsourced provider’ clearly differentiates us from our competitors, making our clients confident and assured that their data is being protected, guarded and monitored at all levels,” remarked Daily. “And, because we are accessing data remotely from our clients’ systems, this added sense of security is even more critical. I would highly recommend eTrust Audit to anyone involved in providing IT security for his/her company. It has simplified our data audit and security process, saving us valuable time and resources, and benefiting our clients in ways we didn’t think possible.”