Starburst’s Journey to Zero Production Admins with Entitle

Starburst's logo - Entitle Just in Time Access
Key outcomes
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Automated on-call escalation for incident handling

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Zero standing admin privileges in production

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Significant reduction in manual work

Tech stack:

Introduction

Starburst, a pioneering software company based in Boston, offers a cutting-edge data lakehouse platform, integrating the best features of data lakes, data warehouses, and data virtualization. Their journey with Entitle showcases a transformative approach to managing cloud access.

The Challenge

Enable access to production as needed, without slowing down operations.

Traditionally, a subset of Starburst's production engineers had elevated roles within their AWS accounts which posed security risks and inefficiencies. The need was clear: to facilitate access to production environments only when necessary, without hindering operational speed.

The Solution

Adopting a read-only baseline, with engineers requesting access to make changes in prod.

Starburst adopted a radical shift to a read-only baseline model. Engineers requesting permissions to make changes in the production environment would go through Entitle. Crucially, for on-call engineers, automatic provisioning was set up, recognizing the urgency and unpredictable nature of incident handling.

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The Impact

No engineers have baseline admin access in production.

The implementation of Entitle led to a groundbreaking outcome: zero engineers with baseline admin access in production. Starburst successfully transitioned from perpetual access to a just-in-time (JIT) model, enhancing security without compromising efficiency.

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Quick time to value
Entitle's intuitive setup and operation allowed Starburst to quickly see the benefits.

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Reduced manual workload
Automatic provisioning and de-provisioning of access rights significantly cut down manual efforts.

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Enhanced Okta group management
Entitle made it easier for users to request and obtain access to specific tools via self-serve group changes.

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Attribute-based approvals
Leveraging job functions and group memberships for auto-approval.

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Simplifying zero trust
Automating production network access through Cloudflare.

"We initially considered building an in-house solution, but Entitle's affordability, ease of use, and comprehensive feature set made it the obvious choice. It not only saved us on additional staffing but also seamlessly integrated into our existing systems."

Shane Dizer Starburst Entitle Just in Time Access

Shane Dizer
Security Engineering Manager, Starburst

Conclusion

Entitle not only provided a robust solution for Starburst's unique challenges but also propelled them towards a more secure, efficient, and manageable cloud environment. This case study exemplifies how innovation in access management can fundamentally change how companies operate in the cloud.

© Starburst Data, Inc. Starburst and Starburst Data are registered trademarks of Starburst Data, Inc. All rights reserved.

It's 2024, but access is still granted manually.

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