Case Study - Schering-Plough

Schering-Plough is a U.S.-based multi-national pharmaceutical concern with net annual sales in excess of $10 billion. With a workforce of 50,000, it markets its drugs in 120 countries worldwide.

Schering-Plough (Avondale) Co. is a subsidiary of the concern, situated in Wicklow in the Republic of Ireland. The facility employs over 400 people, produces up to thirty active pharmaceutical products and is a strategic site in the parent company's production operations.

Information Systems in the Company
In 2005, the requirement for SOX compliancy reached the Irish manufacturing site from the US headquarters. The site was running their ERP and financial accounting systems on an iSeries with two LPARs, under V5R3, with 300 connected users. ODBC and FTP were the most frequently-used means of connecting.

Business Considerations and Compliancy Issues
IT Manager, David Horan, received the task of implementing an auditing solution based upon user profiles and data. His team was introduced to Bsafe/Enterprise Security for System i by Bsafe's Irish partner, Unitech Systems. His own programmer did the installation towards the end of 2005. He examined and tested Bsafe/Enterprise Security and other solutions over a period of many months. He looked particularly for ease of configuration and automated reporting and ultimately found Bsafe's product the more flexible and suited to Schering Plough's requirements. David points out "Bsafe were willing to configure the system to our needs - especially in relation to report configuration". In fact, the close interaction between the Schering Plough Irish facility's IT department and Bsafe's development team brought about some important improvements in the product's reporting capability. These were made generally available to all Bsafe customers in the next release of the product.

Living with Bsafe
At Schering-Plough, the most notable module of Bsafe/Enterprise Security used is the System Audit Manager with its highly flexible system audit report generator and journal manager. David Horan says he is most satisfied with the support received whenever he has had a question and never needs to look at the on-line HTML help.

He enjoys the fact that reports run automatically without user intervention and he states that the auditors, for whom the reports are mainly intended, have been very happy with the results.

Using the product gives him a definite sense of security knowing that auditing issue is fully covered. David adds that Bsafe particularly suits his organization, as they do not have a full-time security administrator. "I would certainly recommend Bsafe/Enterprise Security", he concludes.