SDG
At the Leading Edge of Change

Gone are the days when identity management solutions focused solely on operational efficiencies and provisioning access to corporate applications and data. Identity and access management (IAM) was built into the access infrastructure with complicated legacy systems requiring customization to provide partially-functional solutions. With the growing scope and complexity of modern identity environments, companies need to evolve their identity management to keep pace with the changing demands. As organizations shift from legacy systems to modern products and embrace cloud-first strategies, they seek a solution with a multi-faceted approach that is efficient and robust to scale and facilitate long-term strategic growth while also being cost-effective.

Enter SDG. The Connecticut-based provider of technology, consulting and risk management solutions helps carve the path to mitigate threats to businesses. In doing so, the company’s advisory experts draw on their 20 years of rich experience in the industry to protect clients’ investments and provide a sustainable and secure solution for managing IT risk. Following an “Advice, Transform and Manage” model, the company conducts discussions with the clients understand their technology preferences and frameworks to leverage best practices. This is followed by walking the clients through the implementation journey and providing managed services to ensure their security. Customers can consult SDG’s subject matter experts on governance, risk and compliance initiatives, including GDPR. The service range provided by the company includes cybersecurity, risk management, and identity and access governance. Besides, SDG has an overarching practice called digital transformation with a core of DevOps and secure SDLC. This forms an umbrella that assists the company in application development, creating and implementing IAM solutions, and even risk management consulting. “Our solution set is consistent with the needs of today while creating forward-looking strategic alignments that fall in line with the expected requirements of tomorrow,” says Stephen Sanzone, Director of Identity and Access Management at SDG.

On identifying the lack of a product addressing customer needs with regard to risk and compliance led SDG to build a risk management platform called TruOps.

“TruOps was built to deliver an integrated, cloud-based security risk and compliance management platform to address challenges of over-engineered complex GRC implementations,” explains Nag Bhadravati, COO of SDG. The TruOps solution provides an efficient framework that meets several client needs with minimal complications. TruOps, which has now become a sister organization of SDG, has simplified the process of migrating from an infrastructure- and enterprise-heavy application to a SaaS model that offers high-value services and capabilities along with minimal disruptions, practical investment and short implementation time.

SDG’s in-house innovation team builds frameworks and accelerators and finds the best way to integrate these two to simplify the migration process. The technology-focused company also maintains a “shadow team” that can be deployed in the client organization to meet short-term requirements for managing costs and improving efficiency. The uniqueness of the company also stems from its overarching focus on security, which encourages metrics-driven and risk-based reporting and governance. As the focus in the IAM marketplace shifts from monitoring to compliance, SDG goes beyond merely meeting compliance requirements to actively prevent non-compliance. The company spent nearly three years in creating a pan-European IAM platform that deals with the regulations, nuanced requirements, and cultural challenges of different countries.

In an instance, SDG’s diligent design and extensive efforts aided in reducing the time taken by its client to provide its new employees with birthright access from three weeks to just four days. The company enabled the creation of customer-specific solutions by targeting improvement opportunities in the existing processes and inculcating forward-thinking advancements in its technology.

SDG’s shift to an external workforce accelerates an advanced vendor partnership and provides identity services to customers on an external base. “We plan to provide Identity management as a service to customers in the near future,” concludes Bhadravati.