Case Study: Sacramento Municipal Utility District (SMUD) achieves automated identity governance and protection of sensitive files with SailPoint Technologies

Sacramento Municipal Utility District Safely and Securely Enabling Their Workforce

Sacramento Municipal Utility District (SMUD), the sixth-largest community-owned power utility serving 1.5 million customers around Sacramento and a recognized leader in renewable energy, needed to modernize its identity practices. Manual onboarding, access provisioning and password processes were slow and error-prone, and an audit revealed overexposed unstructured file shares containing sensitive data (SSNs, addresses, credit card information), creating significant compliance and risk concerns.

SMUD deployed SailPoint IdentityIQ and extended governance to unstructured data with SecurityIQ to automate role and password management, onboarding/offboarding, access requests and certifications, and to discover, classify and monitor file permissions. The implementation delivered faster employee lifecycle management, reduced help-desk password tickets, greater visibility into who can access applications and sensitive files, automated enforcement for NERC CIP controls, and a measurable reduction in IT risk and improved regulatory compliance.

Sacramento Municipal Utility District

John Peters

Senior Enterprise Infrastructure Specialist