Condatis revolutionizes staff management with Microsoft Entra Verified ID

A frictionless hybrid workplace

It might be time to say goodbye to the employee badge—at least as we’re used to it. At Edinburgh-based Condatis, as more employees transition from a hybrid work model to a full return to the office, they’re being greeted by a new, intuitive sign-in experience built on virtual, verifiable credentials that provide value-added access to office spaces and services. Whether someone is being onboarded, coming in as a temporary hire, or visiting a staff member, each person will see that some doors in the office will be open for them, and others won’t. If an employee continues to work remotely, they’ll enjoy new ways to collaborate with colleagues, connect to systems and services, and prove their identity on the go.

With a reputation for building innovative, secure, and compliant identity and access management (IAM) solutions, Condatis is the trusted digital identity partner of some of the largest enterprises and government agencies in the world, backed by a team of specialists dedicated to delivering real value. As customers have increasingly come to Condatis seeking support with data access and identity provisioning needs, the company has developed bespoke IAM solutions in the form of a federalized, centralized, or decentralized platform based on Microsoft Azure Active Directory (Azure AD), part of Microsoft Entra. Condatis was an early partner adopter of Azure AD External Identities, and as soon as Microsoft made Microsoft Entra Verified ID available in private preview, the company explored using the capabilities to support its own business needs. 

“That step through the door of digital identity is so important both to us and our customers because it enables working remotely, remote onboarding, and employee awareness for accessing services in a highly safe and secure manner,” says Chris Tate, Chief Executive Officer at Condatis.

Condatis wanted to create a frictionless identity management system to manage and support employees who are returning to the office or continuing to work remotely after the disruption of COVID-19 and improve other internal processes. The company built an internal platform called the Condatis Staff Passport that’s underpinned by Condatis Credential Gateway. With Verified ID to not only track and provide access to internal systems and view up-to-date staff records at the push of a button, Credential Gateway also helps safeguard network assets, business data, and employee wellbeing while it delivers world-class services to Condatis customers.

Verifiable identities in action

Protecting organizations and connecting people—it’s this purpose statement that motivates Condatis to help employees thrive within an ever-evolving, digitally propelled landscape. By developing Credential Gateway for its own internal use, Condatis had the opportunity to put best practices in action, tailor its solution to real workplace scenarios, and create a seamless user experience driven by Microsoft Entra. “With the prospect of employees returning to the office, we thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be fantastic to take a world-leading technology like Microsoft Entra and implement Verified ID for employees in our own office environment?’” says Tate. “We easily identified business opportunities where it would help us work more efficiently. We’ve hired 25 percent of our workforce since the pandemic started. They need to be able to join our organization seamlessly, have access to data, and come in and out of the office fluidly.”

Condatis Credential Gateway queries an existing employee’s data held in Azure AD to create a digital credential, which it issues to the employee in a digital wallet. Employees then share their Condatis credential via a QR code using the Microsoft Authenticator app when they check in. Each credential is entered into a digital Office Register that’s visible to administrative staff and fire wardens, creating a record of who’s in the office, where they sit in the building, and who’s signed in but working from home. This helps greatly with employee health and safety in the event of an emergency or drill because fire wardens and other security personnel can be sure that all in-person staff are properly evacuated. Employees can also use their credentials to unlock more personalized services to improve their work experience, like using them instead of passwords to access internal systems, giving workers one less thing to remember throughout the day.

To transform how it operates and how its employees work, Condatis has identified use cases for Credential Gateway at all levels of the organization. In addition to supporting employees, it’s able to welcome customers, clients, contractors, freelancers, and other visitors to the office with temporary credentials created prior to arrival that give them access to exactly the locations, technology, and services they need. Condatis can also provide those visitors time-controlled access to services like meeting rooms and wireless networking and fully manage the life cycle of guests in the office.

A security-first solution that simplifies identity

Both Microsoft Entra and Condatis Credential Gateway were designed with a security-first mindset and have built-in audit logging capabilities for data monitoring. Credential Gateway provides an open standards–based interface, using OpenID Connect to allow client applications to issue or verify verifiable credentials in a highly secure and familiar way. For added security, Condatis and its customers can easily configure the solutions to align with their Zero Trust principles and define their own trust framework to determine who they trust and which types of information they trust those entities to provide.

In using verifiable credentials to simplify IAM, Condatis has identified new opportunities to help complex customers such as hospital networks better connect employees across business units. Throughout COVID-19, Condatis was proud to bring Verified ID to its work with the National Health Service (NHS) and partner Sitekit in the United Kingdom, a service that consists of more than 200 separate hospital groups. Alasdair Murray, Chief Product Officer at Condatis, shares, “NHS asked us, ‘How can we efficiently move staff between sites as we discover resourcing trouble spots, knowing they’re not necessarily all using the same systems and the same databases?’ We answered with Verified ID.”

Embracing decentralized identity with Verified ID makes it possible for Condatis, NHS, and other customers it works with to support temporary staff transfers and create a verifiable, up-to-date employee skills and training matrix to help ensure that employees are qualified for their role. In return, individuals get more power over their digital identity with selective disclosure and credentials that they can share externally using their own device. “Within your own hospital group, for example, you still use the same Azure AD that you’ve always used, but you can also be issued a credential that’s on your phone when you need to work in another hospital,” says Murray.

Deep diving into Azure cloud resources

Whether it’s deploying digital identity solutions internally or for customers, Condatis relies on a range of Azure resources to support rapid, scalable development. “We’re a small company, but the whole principle of verifiable credentials and what we’ve implemented scales because everything is cloud-based on Azure,” says Murray. “You could use the same approach for a very large site with thousands of employees or multiple buildings.”

Condatis uses Azure products and features, such as Azure Key Vault and Azure Application Gateway, to help secure its infrastructure. It uses Azure Cosmos DB to manage NoSQL databases and Azure App Service to run and easily scale all of its web applications.

“We appreciate being able to work in partnership with Microsoft on the latest and greatest products and features and shape the technology to meet the requirements that a customer gives us,” says Richard Astley, Lead Solutions Architect at Condatis. “I don’t think there’s a better cloud provider than Microsoft out there to work alongside.”

Saving time, reducing risk, and imagining the future

Ask any Condatis employee and they will surely identify two key benefits of Verified ID—time savings and risk reduction—that benefit both the company and its customers. “For example, it previously took multiple days for NHS administration to move a staff member between hospitals, but that’s now down to minutes thanks to Azure AD and Verified ID,” says Murray. “That time saving enables businesses to be more flexible, save money on administration, and get staff working where needed much more quickly.”

Condatis notes that risk mitigation is particularly apparent in industries that are heavily regulated. As cybersecurity becomes intertwined with IAM, Verified ID allows Condatis and its customers to better curate data and cut off any potentially dangerous backdoor entry access to that data. “Obviously, if you’re reducing time and risk, you’re also having a good impact on cost,” says Murray. “These are some of the things that a really good identity solution like Verified ID gives you.”

With its use of verifiable credentials having such an effect internally, Condatis is proud to “walk the talk” with a growing number of customers and continue highlighting the business benefits of Verified ID. “We couldn’t do this on our own without Verified ID,” reflects Astley. “We’ve demonstrated that by building on Verified ID, you can have independent software like Condatis Credential Gateway augment what’s already a strong, secure, and trusted platform with additional features and benefits related to bringing your own identity and having control over it.”

Next, the company will use Condatis Credential Gateway and Verified ID to help create an even more resilient future for businesses everywhere by exploring complex identity verification journeys. Think binding identity verification, license checks, and biometrics together as part of issuing verifiable credentials. “That’s where we see the power of Verified ID really coming out,” says Murray. “Bringing all the different aspects of a person’s identity together—that’s the ultimate trusted credential.”

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