CIO Bulletin

BeClever – A proactive company for all your IT needs

Digital transformation represents an opportunity for improving productivity growth by enabling innovation and reducing the costs of a range of business processes. It allows companies to improve their business model, maximize the value of their products and services, introduce the necessary innovation processes within the companies, and promote the differentiation and strengths of their products and services. Cybersecurity is a key area within the Digital Transformation journey.

One such company that has been innovating and helping companies in their IT needs, since 2011, is BeClever. We managed to talk to the CEO of BeClever, Aiert Azueta Dudagoitia, who gave some insights into the company. Here are a few snippets of the same:

Q. What exclusive services do you offer in your IT offerings?

BeClever has three business units: Infrastructure and databases, applications, and cybersecurity.

In the first two business units, we mainly focus on database performance and replication projects, as well as manual process automation through Robotic Process Automation (RPA) initiatives. Cybersecurity is a very broad area. In our case, our focus areas are mainly two:

Digital Identity security, where we try to secure user access to applications and/or systems.

Data anonymization, where we try to make sure real data is not accessible by a certain type of user.

Q. How unique and advanced is BeClever when it comes to advanced cybersecurity?

Attackers have an easy access nowadays to internal resources, which makes critical a good application access control. In order to secure this access, our Identity and Access Management (IAM) services will include:

Access management, making sure whoever is trying to connect is who says to be
Identity Management, making sure all employees or collaborators have the permissions they need to have in all applications to do their jobs, but no more than that
Privileged Access Management, making sure privileged accounts are protected and inaccessible to attackers
Microsoft Active Directory protection, including Kerberos (Golden Ticket or Pass-the-Hash) attack detection, auditing, administration delegation, advanced backup and recovery (including automatic forest level recovery) or secure application or patch deployment

Q. What are your strategiesto increase productivity?

Collaboration, Security, and Automation will be the main focus areas where BeClever will work side by side with the customer to accompany in this Digital Transformation journey and to increase productivity.

The way of working has changed in recent months, mostly due to the Covid-19 pandemic. We need to make sure companies are prepared for this new era, making sure collaboration is easy and seamless.

We are making a special effort in delivering projects and services around collaboration tools, such as Microsoft 365 or Zoom. Automation is another key area in BeClever. In this sense, we deliver Robotic Process Automation projects, to automate manual tasks, which allows people to avoid useless, boring and prone to error tasks, and dedicate to other valuable and challenging tasks as well as Identity Management services, which take care of all user lifecycle management regarding user permission provisioning in company applications. Finally, in Security, we focus on making companies understand that Digital Identity Security is key to securing any access to company applications and data.

Q. What are your offerings for infrastructure and databases?

We mainly focus on offering advanced IT services to customers and prospects. Regarding databases, we are specialized in database performance and database replication, in order to guarantee performance and availability. Performance has been historically one of the main areas where BeClever has focused on, as well as replication projects.

Q. Any instances or case studies where clients have benefitted from your services?

I can speak about several case studies:

Case study 1 - Collaboration: We take care of all the collaboration related applications of one of the main public entities in Spain, including Microsoft 365, Zoom and some other applications around both.

Case study 2 - Automation: We have automated several manual processes using Robotic Process Automation (RPA). This work was done manually by people, but it was a work that wouldn´t contribute at all to the company. After automating these tasks, we have reduced the number of errors drastically, while reducing the time of execution.

Case study 3 - Automation and Security (IAM): We have automatized all the user lifecycle for one of the biggest private universities of Spain delivering an Identity and Access Management (IAM) program. Previously all the user account provisioning in the different applications within this university was a manual task for the IT department. Automating this task, we have made possible students, teachers, investigators, and staff to be productive at the same moment they join the university while reducing privileges with the least privilege approach, to guarantee risk minimization.

Case study 4 - Security (PAM): We have secured all privileged access to one of the most important insurance companies in Spain implementing a Privileged Access Management solution. IT administrators were the owners of privileged users such as root users, domain administrators, or local administrators, with the consequent danger, not only due to what they could do with that level of access but due to what an external attacker could do if gets hold of those passwords. Once implemented the PAM solution, administrators make requests, and the system will deliver them an already logged-in session, transparently injecting credentials in the background. These sessions will be recorded and audited for security reasons.

Case Study 5 - Zero downtime Database migration to the cloud: We have migrated the most critical Oracle Databases for one of the largest industrial companies in Europe, migrating them to the public cloud, reducing the downtime of the systems to a minimum, while assuring target performance, and failback possibilities.

About the Head Honcho

Aiert Azueta Dudagoitia completed his Graduation in Computer Science at Deusto University, after which, started to work as an Oracle database administrator for one of the largest retail companies in Spain. As the next step in his career, he joined a recently created IT services company to develop the system integration department, which he made it grow during the next years. In 2011, Aiert Azueta Dudagoitia, with his colleagues David Fernández Benito and Mamen Marco Canal, founded BeClever, an advanced IT services company, which is now one of the leaders in the IAM consulting services space

in Spain. Since then, the company has evolved under Aiert Azueta´s leadership, who is responsible for the strategy of the company, including new technology and services offerings, go-to-market strategy, or employee engagement.