The day-to-day changes within companies are massive: employee entries and exits, changes of use, changes of tasks and functions, changes of departments and responsibilities as well as onboarding and offboarding processes of external parties happen several times a day. Legal and operational requirements, verification obligations and regulations are in constant flux. Systems and processes undergo constant adjustments. Keeping track of all these dynamic requirements is a challenge in itself – implementing and ensuring these reliably, accurately, error-free, up-to-date, audit-proof and traceable at every location and for every process operationally through manual administration and system maintenance is hardly possible.

Based on these facts, .secure works with the principle of rule-based automation. This means: on the basis of a few and transparent rules, intelligent software agents implement the most diverse change requirements completely automatically in all connected systems on the basis of electronic processes. This is implemented reliably, completely, traceably and always in accordance with the operationally defined specifications. Thus, responsible persons can simply be sure – no matter what kind of changes take place per minute, hour or day – all systems work compliantly to the specifications – without even one system administrator having to take manual action.

This rule-based and automated execution of all processes results in no errors and the highest compliance and audit conformity can be ensured.

The freedom to choose at any time – to model and use the most suitable processes, systems or components at any time without any real restrictions – is another basic principle of gis GmbH software solutions. Closed” systems, proprietary protocols, or other artificial restrictions imposed by system vendors and solution providers can create dependency for customers.

The dynamics with regard to changes in the organizational and legal spheres, coupled with the development and use of innovative technologies and cross-company processes, leave no room for restrictions and artificial dependencies. An intelligent combination of proven systems and technologies, the mixing of a wide variety of manufacturer systems, and the use and barrier-free deployment of new processes, systems and components must be possible for agile companies at all times. To be able to adapt quickly, to change and take advantage of new opportunities, to map local as well as central requirements easily and immediately and to be prepared for the challenges of the future – this is what a platform offers that is very flexible, independent, standardizable, modern and modular.

.secure offers exactly this functionality in its base. It offers manufacturer, system, technology and operating model independence. Freedom here means: no matter which manufacturers your access terminals are from, no matter which (access or administration) systems they work with, no matter whether you use mechanical systems, different RFID technologies or biometric processes – .secure can support and control exactly these mixed forms. Meanwhile, you even have the freedom to choose the operating models. It is almost irrelevant whether the system platform is operated in your own data center (OnPremise) or in a hosted third-party data center or even in modern cloud ecosystems available worldwide (OnDemand). The customers of .secure have the maximum freedom of choice.

To operate the entirety of changes over a very long period of time with the highest reliability and complete up-to-dateness – this is what gis GmbH understands by Life Cycle Management – and this under many aspects. It’s not just the lifecycle of an employee, a device, a door or facility, an authorization policy, a legal requirement, an organizational restructuring, a technology change, a change of use of buildings and spaces, a process change. It is the, life cycle of a data set under the aspects of data protection, editing and visibility, changes of operator behavior – all these aspects require a very high flexibility in the area of definition of behavior and possibilities of parameterization of changes.

The integration of life cycle management in .secure enables extremely flexible and automated handling of validities of individual data sets. This model is also available in the handling of interfaces and thus data records can be received from or transferred to subsystems before or after the actual validities.

By merging life cycle management and personal data records, the applications of gis GmbH make it possible to map the entire life cycle of a person, without gaps. By dividing the Life Cycle into PreActive, Active, InActive, and DeActive, a person can go through various changes such as change of department, sabbatical, etc., with only one record created and without creating multiple records on a person.

.secure is equipped for this challenge on the basis of its basic architecture. New requirements can be seamlessly incorporated into the robust software models.

All gis GmbH applications are 100% browser-based, which means that they can be used without any installation on the individual workstations and with different browsers and operating systems, even with mobile devices. This means: maximum rollout speed, simplest user experience, familiar operating concepts, lowest life cycle costs, most flexible and minimal hardware requirements, simplest scalability, high variance and flexibility of the IT infrastructure, greatest possible freedom of operating models, fullest use of all modern integration technologies and simplest barrier-free administration – centrally, regionally and locally.

Full operation of all functions via a standard browser is possible without restrictions and without any software installation on users’ computers and based on standard Microsoft backend technologies, even in current cloud environments. This means that even large and complex installations can be operationally deployed very quickly.

In addition to the basic operational processes of the application, the crucial linchpin is the control of authorizations. In your company, it is crucial to give employees the actual concrete permissions they are entitled to, based on their current task, position, role, competence, qualification or function, while denying all other permissions. In addition, evidence must be kept about it that can withstand any audit to a “click”.

Permissions are multi-layered in our context. For example, it may be free access to the workplace, use of the cafeteria for external parties, possession of a key to access the technical rooms, approval for a business process, and access to evaluations or access to a specific application in a specific role (such as being an absenteeism representative as a “team leader”). But it can also be the right to create an order process for an external service provider, to receive a report about visit processes, to have the possibility to use a parking lot and much more.

Based on a wide variety of parameters, rules and policies, this set of rules determines the provisioning (provisioning) of the currently defined and specified set of authorizations. It also determines the secure denial (deprovisioning) of all other unjustified and invalid authorizations, which is even more important. The determination of authorizations is a permanent process, which can change every second. The core task of the .secure authorization model is to automatically detect these changes, evaluate them and pass them on to all relevant systems and processes at a specific time of validity.

This guarantees a process and system world that is 100% compliant with definitions, rules and policies, traceable and reliable – without any manual interaction and with the most up-to-date data.

For more than 25 years, the systems of gis GmbH have been processing highly sensitive personal data. We have been aware of the existential importance of IT security measures not only since the current discussion about the EU-DSGVO. The threat scenarios to IT systems are increasing – at the same time, the need to operationalize business processes across companies is growing. In .secure, a multitude of state-of-the-art, proven standard technologies are anchored to ensure IT security, data protection, privacy and data security – and that in operational as well as in modern cloud environments. In addition, the rule-based authorization management ensures that the very finely granulated authorizations take effect reliably and securely.

For more than 25 years, the systems of gis GmbH have been processing highly sensitive personal data. We have been aware of the existential importance of IT security measures not only since the current discussion about the EU-DSGVO. The threat scenarios to IT systems are increasing – at the same time, the need to operationalize business processes across companies is growing. In .secure, a multitude of state-of-the-art, proven standard technologies are anchored to ensure IT security, data protection, privacy and data security – and that in operational as well as in modern cloud environments. In addition, the rule-based authorization management ensures that the very finely granulated authorizations take effect reliably and securely.

secure is a platform that can be integrated to a high degree into existing ecosystems: it receives resilient data from controlling systems, processes it, consolidates it, connects it with its own (settings, rules, policies and other own data pools) and supplies subsystems with this data (uni- or bidirectionally). Using access control as an example, data could come from utility systems such as HR systems (SAP HCM/OM), identity management systems, IT directories such as Microsoft Active Directory, or room data from facility management systems. The room or security zones are managed in .secure including the authorization parameters, as is the badge production. The corresponding authorizations are then sent from the .secure system to the access system(s) ,which in turn execute them for the “door open” decision. Booking data from high-security areas could be returned to .secure to be stored for 14 days as specified, while all other booking information could be deleted immediately.

.secure supports a variety of standard technologies to exchange data with subsystems. The intelligent agents perform their activities according to defined patterns – time or event controlled or on-demand.

Integration

.secure can be integrated into all system environments and is implemented on the basis of proven Microsoft standard technologies (.NET). Existing Microsoft systems are also used. A wide range of interface technologies are implemented for communication with other systems. A major advantage is that all in-house work and approval processes can be mapped in .secure. The Microsoft Workflow Engine is used for this purpose.

Interfaces

Currently, we support many different manufacturer systems from the field of electronic access control that are connected to the platform .secure – and there are more and more! In addition, the software supports various RFID and biometric systems and controls online and offline, mechanical, mechatronic and depot systems. The combination of different access technologies or manufacturer systems – a big hurdle for most of our competitors – are typical use cases for us.

The Self Services of the gis GmbH offer the users an independent, time as well as hardware-independent possibility to be able to accomplish processes independently and with minimum expenditure. Various parameterizable business processes are mapped on easy-to-use browser-based interfaces. Self-services extremely shorten process runtimes and save your employees the time they need for the really important things. Transparency is ensured by clearly showing which application is at which approval stage. By documenting the individual steps, it is possible to track at any time the status of the process and who, as the processor, initiated the corresponding steps and when.

Self services for employees are basic elements for fast and resilient business processes. The data there is captured where it is generated and routed directly and without media breaks through electronically mapped approval processes to the current approval points to provide immediate feedback – it doesn’t get any faster, more transparent or error-free than this.

The workflow processes enable the mapping of more or less complex work steps and decision points of a business process. In addition to the standard business processes, the .secure world offers the possibility of customer-specific extensions through customizing measures.

Within .secure, workflows are used, for example, to control applications or their approval process. The workflow processes are started depending on various parameters. These can be multi-level. Depending on the definition, the stored responsible persons are then informed when an application is submitted. As soon as a defined process step has been completed, the next one is automatically initiated by the system.

For the user and all those involved in the process, this means: extremely simple operation, immediate information and transparency, and no multiple entries. For process owners, this means high flexibility in modeling their business processes and maximum speed and integrity at minimum cost.

The software solutions of gis GmbH integrate the features of transparency, auditing and compliance down to the last detail.

Transparency
With the software solutions of gis GmbH, all processes are documented in detail so that maximum transparency can be offered to the users. Documentation in combination with individual authorization management ensures that data is made available to the right people and provides the best possible transparency within the respective authorization groups.

Revision
Due to the application-oriented mode of operation of .secure, every change is checked and documented. This means that every change, e.g. of interfaces or user interfaces, is seamlessly registered and thus made traceable for internal and external audits at any time.

Compliance
Due to the increasing number of standards, laws and regulations, it is becoming more and more difficult for companies to comply with the multitude of rules. The software solutions of gis GmbH help you to comply with, check and monitor both your internally defined specifications and the externally specified rules.