Paychex improves its SecOps with help from ITS & ServiceNow

Learn how industry leader Paychex found increased efficiency and peace of mind with help from ITS.

Paychex is a nationally recognized leader in the payroll, human resources, and benefits outsourcing industry, but the company was facing a technical challenge. Paychex handles vast amounts of data, and much of it is highly sensitive. But while the Paychex all-in-one HR and payroll platform provides power and simplicity for more than 680,000 businesses, the company’s in-house security operations team were inundated with burdensome complexities.

When Paychex suspects that a client has a data breach, they send fraud and security investigations units into action. These agile teams collect and analyze data quickly, providing the client with the support and information they need. Both time and confidentiality are critical during these sensitive investigations. 

With Paychex’s two previous ticketing systems, their security investigations team spent too much time manually inputting information and managing the platforms’ flaws. While there needed to be security protections that kept private data hidden from the general population, the old systems lacked any integration with each other. As the team tried to balance all these moving parts, they worried they might miss things.

Paychex turned to ITS Partners and ServiceNow for help.

RELATED: ITS Partners’ Prescriptive Vulnerability Response 

ITS’ Solution Delivers the Practical Tools That Paychex Needs 

ITS suggested ServiceNow’s Incident and Vulnerability Response modules as a solution. While the Paychex team made some minor customizations, they easily transitioned to the new software. Paychex discovered that, thanks to the module’s automation and functionality, they achieved better results. They found they could securely share more information and track the security investigations team’s progress with more accuracy.

"Instead of just agreeing with us or encouraging us to build something from scratch, ITS would apply their experience," says Taylor. "They’d say, ‘Yep, we’ve done this for other clients. This is how it works. This is a really good way to do it, and that’s probably what we would recommend.’ Or, ‘You might be able to do it, but we probably wouldn’t recommend it. Just because you can build something from scratch doesn’t mean you should.’ Leveraging that knowledge on hand with people you should speak to directly; that’s pretty unparalleled for any vendor service that we’ve had before."

ITS supported Paychex at every step, providing practical insight and information. Taylor, one of Paychex’s security investigations analysts, notes that ITS offered exceptional service and leveraged their experience to make recommendations that were grounded in the real world. 

Karen, an IT administrator and developer at Paychex, mirrored this sentiment. "ITS was willing to truly partner and challenge us on some of our, ‘we want it this way’ discussions. They were very good at having that conversation in a constructive way to say, ‘we think that’s not a good choice,’ and get us to the best product."

RELATED: The Case for Outsourcing Your SecOps Implementation

Paychex Experiences More Productivity and Innovation, Thanks to ITS and ServiceNow  

With integrated and automated solutions, the Paychex team suddenly had more time on their hands. Instead of worrying about reporting and slogging through old, inefficient systems, the security investigations team had time to improve operations and coverage. They were doing more with less, and the company reaped the benefits. Vulnerability response process times were reduced by over 50% and over 100 hours of work were eliminated with the work in security incident response. 

It’s really, really nice to have accurate reporting and metrics on a single pane of glass, Taylor notes. You can send a report to management saying, ‘Hey, these are our average time; this is how well we’re doing.’

Naveen, Paychex’s software engineering manager, noticed a similar boost in productivity. With ServiceNow’s automation and improved workflow, they able to do more with less team. They were able to repurpose their existing resources to focus more on security operations than doing manual tasks, which they used to do in the past.

ITS: Your Trusted ServiceNow Elite Partner 

ITS is passionate about SecOps, ServiceNow, and our customers. We provide practical solutions that meet businesses’ immediate and long-term goals, focusing on security incident responses, vulnerability management, and IT management productivity.If you want to learn more about our innovative approach and client-centered solutions, check our customer story here.

References: Paychex at a glance. 2020. Retrieved from: https://www.paychex.com/sites/default/files/2020-09/paychex-at-a-glance.pdf