Crelan is a large Belgian bank and insurance company with an extensive branch network. With competent agents and a digital platform, it is committed to supporting individuals and entrepreneurs in their personal and professional development. While the bank provided its agents with a flexible way of working, employees still needed a modern way to provision their devices. Many of these employees work offsite, but every 90 days, when it came time to reset their passwords, they would have to go into the office. This process was both burdensome and time consuming.

For Crelan to support future growth ambitions, it needed to modernize its workplace and optimize its processes. The bank was ready to begin its digital transformation, and the first step was a move to the cloud. Given the security standards of the banking industry, Crelan chose the Microsoft 365 platform and Avanade, as one of the most trusted Microsoft partners.

To understand the current IT environment as well as future requirements, we started by engaging key stakeholders in a number of design workshops. We are now performing a technical upgrade on Crelan’s Microsoft infrastructure and workplace, building and configuring the required components:

• Azure Active Directory to help employees sign on and authorize access to resources and data from anywhere, anytime
• Azure multifactor authentication and conditional access to help safeguard access to data and applications while maintaining simplicity for end users
• Self-service password reset for employees to reset their passwords or unlock their accounts using their own credentials, without helpdesk or administrator assistance
• Microsoft Intune to manage device compliance remotely, push updates and block or wipe both corporate and “Bring Your Own Devices” (BYOD).

Avanade’s Zero-Trust Network (ZTN) standards are at the center of Crelan’s new security protocols, enabling the bank to maintain complete control of data access, movement and storage using the state-of-the-art Azure Information Rights Management System. Avanade’s ZTN will be embedded in all Crelan IT systems to set appropriate security settings.

Once the solution goes live, more than 3,000 users will have single sign-on authentication. By securely unlocking the value of the Microsoft cloud, Crelan has taken the first step in its digital transformation and laid the foundation for it to proceed with a full implementation of Microsoft 365.

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