Customer Success Story: Vault Dedicated Consulting @ Ergon

src/content/customers/en/ergon.md

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+---
+title: Enterprise Secrets Management with HCP Vault Dedicated
+company: Ergon Informatik AG
+logo: ../../../assets/customers/ergon.svg
+pubDate: 2026-10-02
+results:
+  - |
+    Accelerated platform evaluation by providing expert answers to critical
+    questions
+  - |
+    Reduced compliance effort by leveraging HashiCorp's ISO 27001 certification
+  - |
+    Enabled informed decision-making through comprehensive risk analysis
+  - |
+    Eliminated costly trial-and-error testing with ready-to-use operational
+    guidance
+quote:
+  "Ergon gained not just documentation, but the strategic understanding needed
+  to make a confident platform decision."
+authorName: ""
+authorTitle: ""
+---
+
+## Customer
+
+[Ergon Informatik AG](https://www.ergon.ch/en) is a leading Swiss IT company
+specializing in tailored software solutions and security products. Founded in
+1984, Ergon combines expertise in technology, security, and business to serve
+clients across finance, healthcare, manufacturing, and public sectors. The
+company employs over 400 staff members across three locations in Switzerland and
+is known for its flagship product Airlock, a comprehensive security solution for
+web applications and APIs, including access management.
+
+## Background
+
+Ergon was developing Airlock IAM as a Service, a product offering for their
+customers that would rely on enterprise secrets management capabilities. As a
+company serving highly regulated industries with strict security and compliance
+requirements, selecting the right secrets management foundation was critical.
+
+However, making the wrong platform choice could waste months of integration
+work. The company needed practical answers to specific questions: How do backups
+work? What capabilities does each role provide? Would a 30-day retention limit
+meet their customers' disaster recovery expectations? Most critically, would
+building on an ISO 27001-certified platform reduce the compliance burden for
+their own application?
+
+Rather than spending weeks conducting trial-and-error testing, Ergon engaged
+bespinian for expert consultation. The company needed someone who deeply
+understood both HashiCorp Vault's technical architecture and the practical
+implications for building compliant enterprise products.
+
+## Project Goals
+
+Ergon needed expert guidance to make an informed platform decision without
+costly trial-and-error:
+
+- Understand whether HCP Vault Dedicated's backup and restore capabilities would
+  meet their customers' disaster recovery expectations
+- Determine the operational overhead and team resources required to manage the
+  platform effectively
+- Evaluate how HashiCorp's ISO 27001 certification could reduce the compliance
+  burden for their own application
+- Identify potential risks, constraints, and limitations that could impact their
+  product offering or customer commitments
+- Assess whether the platform's access control model would support their team
+  structure and security requirements
+- Gain practical, actionable knowledge to compare HCP Vault Dedicated against
+  alternative solutions
+
+## bespinian's Role
+
+bespinian played a key role in the following areas:
+
+### Backup and Disaster Recovery Evaluation
+
+Ergon needed to know whether HCP Vault Dedicated's backup capabilities would
+support the disaster recovery commitments the company planned to offer
+customers. The fixed 30-day retention period was particularly concerning—could
+this constraint prevent them from meeting customer SLAs?
+
+bespinian analyzed the platform's snapshot-based backup system and clearly
+documented what Ergon would gain (automated daily backups with built-in
+redundancy, no operational overhead) versus what they would trade off (fixed
+30-day retention, no API automation, web-only operations). Critically, bespinian
+discovered that while the UI doesn't allow retention changes, HashiCorp Support
+can accommodate longer retention on a case-by-case basis for compliance needs.
+
+This analysis gave Ergon the practical information needed to assess whether the
+platform would work for their use case—without spending weeks setting up test
+environments and conducting their own experiments. They could confidently
+evaluate whether this backup model aligned with their customer commitments or
+whether they needed to consider alternatives.
+
+### Operational Readiness Assessment
+
+Before committing to any platform, the company needed to understand the
+operational overhead—what skills would their team need? How complex would
+routine operations be? Would they require expensive ongoing consultancy?
+
+bespinian developed practical operational runbooks that guide team members
+through critical procedures step-by-step, from creating manual snapshots before
+major changes to executing disaster recovery procedures. The runbooks were
+designed for operations teams without deep HashiCorp expertise, reducing
+dependency on specialized knowledge.
+
+These ready-to-use guides gave Ergon confidence that their existing team could
+manage the platform effectively. Rather than discovering operational complexity
+after adoption, they understood exactly what day-to-day management would
+require—enabling accurate resource planning and cost projection for their
+product offering.
+
+### Team Structure and Access Planning
+
+Ergon needed practical answers to access control questions: What capabilities
+does each role provide? How should the company structure team access? Would the
+platform's permission model work for their organization?
+
+bespinian provided clear, practical documentation answering questions like "what
+can a Contributor do?" and "which role do operations engineers need?" The
+analysis explained the platform's control plane/data plane separation—meaning
+different team members managing infrastructure versus using Vault need different
+access patterns. Importantly, bespinian identified where the platform's fixed
+roles differ from self-hosted Vault, helping Ergon understand what flexibility
+they would gain or lose.
+
+This practical guidance enabled Ergon to plan their team structure and access
+policies before adoption, avoiding the costly reorganization that often follows
+platform selection. They understood exactly which team members needed which
+access levels and could factor this into their operational model.
+
+### Compliance Leverage Strategy
+
+A critical question for Ergon was whether building on an ISO 27001-certified
+platform would reduce the compliance burden for their own application. If part
+of their system was already certified, would they have less to prove to auditors
+and customers?
+
+bespinian explained how to leverage HashiCorp's ISO 27001 certification as
+supporting evidence in their own compliance framework. When using certified
+third-party components, organizations can reference the vendor's security
+controls, SOC 2 reports, and certifications during audits—demonstrating due
+diligence in supplier selection. bespinian documented the specific security
+measures covered by HashiCorp's certification, including encryption, high
+availability, and backup redundancy.
+
+This insight was valuable beyond the immediate platform decision. The company
+understood that choosing a certified component would reduce what they needed to
+evaluate and prove for their own application's compliance—potentially saving
+significant time and cost in certification efforts. This compliance leverage
+became an important factor in their platform evaluation.
+
+### Risk Identification and Decision Support
+
+Platform selection always involves trade-offs and risks. Ergon needed to
+understand what risks they would be accepting with a managed service
+model—before discovering them through costly post-adoption surprises.
+
+bespinian conducted comprehensive risk analysis covering scenarios like
+accidental cluster deletion (recoverable only through HashiCorp Support), audit
+log gaps that could complicate security investigations, and personnel access
+patterns inherent to the managed model. For example, bespinian identified that
+the platform's dual audit trail system (HCP events and Vault logs) lacks direct
+correlation, potentially creating challenges during incident investigations or
+compliance audits.
+
+Most importantly, bespinian presented these findings not as deal-breakers, but
+as factors to weigh in the decision. Each identified risk came with context: Was
+this acceptable given the operational overhead they were avoiding? Could the
+company implement compensating controls? Should they negotiate specific terms
+with HashiCorp? This analysis enabled Ergon to make a fully informed
+decision—whether to adopt HCP Vault Dedicated with eyes open to the trade-offs,
+or to evaluate alternatives with a clear understanding of what to look for.
+
+Through this focused engagement, bespinian transformed weeks of potential
+trial-and-error testing into actionable insights delivered in a matter of hours.
+Ergon gained not just documentation, but the strategic understanding needed to
+make a confident platform decision—whether that meant adopting HCP Vault
+Dedicated, negotiating specific terms with HashiCorp, or evaluating alternatives
+with a clear framework of what matters. The practical knowledge and ready-to-use
+operational guidance provided a foundation for moving forward without costly
+experimentation or expensive ongoing consultancy dependencies.
+
+## Technologies Used
+
+- **Secrets Management**: HashiCorp Vault, HCP Vault Dedicated
+- **Cloud Platform**: HashiCorp Cloud Platform (HCP)
+- **Infrastructure**: AWS (Amazon S3 for backups, KMS for encryption)
+- **Audit Log Streaming**: Amazon CloudWatch, Datadog, Grafana Cloud (optional
+  integrations)

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