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In an industry where first-to-market is everything, protecting company secrets is imperative. Pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca has invested heavily in safeguarding its intellectual property.

By Editor on Feb 8, 2006

In an industry where first-to-market is everything, protecting company secrets is imperative. Pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca has invested heavily in safeguarding its intellectual property. Using the Inter-Business Vault from security company Cyber-Ark Software, the leading drug maker shields intellectual property from prying eyes.

AstraZeneca specializes in medicines to treat cancer, cardiovascular conditions, gastrointestinal disorders, the central nervous system, pain, and respiratory illnesses. The company employs 64,000 around the world. With $21.4 billion in annual sales, AstraZeneca is one of the top five pharmaceutical and health care services providers in the world. The company spends billions of dollars on drug research and development through collaborations with research organizations, universities, and biotechnology partners around the world. With dozens of research partners and 11,900 employees communicating in the R&D process over multiple networks, protection of IP was not feasible through a walled castle approach to security.

The company needed a secure and manageable way to collaborate with its contract research organizations, and academic and biotechnology partners. We needed a secure way to share documents with our business partners, says Patrick Meehan, lead technical architect AstraZeneca.

Previously, AstraZeneca used a secure collaborative application it had built in-house, which required a VPN client to be installed on each user's system. This was expensive to support and hindered collaboration. We were always getting [help-desk] calls about it. Either it didn'st work, we had to constantly adjust firewall settings, or similar annoying issues, says Meehan.

The company sought an alternative solution that involved no plug-ins or software that had to be installed on end users's systems. They also wanted a secure web-based tool that was transparent to the end user.

We wanted no setup overhead or concerns about having to open firewall ports, Meehan says.

They evaluated several security offerings, but found the other vendors's programs either too cumbersome to deploy and manage, or that they simply failed to provide the complete solution AstraZeneca required. After completing several internal pilots, AstraZeneca chose Cyber-Ark Software's Inter-Business Vault to replace its in-house collaboration system.

It's proven to be very easy to deploy and maintain. There's no need to tweak any code, says Meehan.

Cyber-Ark's Vaulting Technology was developed to create information safe havens. The technology provides layered protection through its integrated firewall, authentication, access control, session and data encryption, content inspection, secure backup, version control, and other granular security controls. AstraZeneca can now create infrastructure to securely connect and collaborate with their partners, subcontractors, and customers over the Internet.

AstraZeneca has the option to integrate other authentication methods, such as public key infrastructure, RSA security, or Windows Domain authentication. The company's security managers can create highly-specific access rights to control which users are authorized to view specific Vaults and they can limit how long an individual has access rights. The company has also gained full audit trails for all activities pertaining to the Vault.

AstraZeneca first deployed the Inter-Business Vault for use within its drug development process. The investments and information tracking needed to bring a new drug to market is overwhelming. It can take more than a decade before the drug can pass FDA approval, and millions of pages of documentation can be generated. It's estimated that it costs pharmaceutical companies $1 million for each day a drug is under development.

One of the key benefits Cyber-Ark brought to us is the ability to exchange data and documents more quickly with our business partners, says Meehan. We can share R&D data and other essential information in real time, increasing efficiency and productivity.

The company has also gained complete version control for each file uploaded to a Vault. When files are placed inside the Vault, new versions are created and existing files are never overwritten. This powerful version-control mechanism protects against deliberate and unintentional data corruption and has been extremely useful, says Meehan.

Inter-Business Vault proved itself extremely beneficial for creating highly-secure collaborative groups. Based on this experience, AstraZeneca has deployed the technology throughout its organization. Whenever a new business unit needs to create a secure collaborative workgroup, Meehan simply adds the users, and sets the security polices for the new Vault which, in many cases, can be created in a day. It's that simple, says Meehan.

He concluded: Employees across the company have gained a productive way to communicate and share sensitive content without fear of data loss.

For more information, visit www.cyber-ark.com .