Our Work |Unravel

Unified IAM and Security Architecture for SENEC GmbH

Written by Michał Kosztowny | Sep 8, 2025 11:38:33 AM

SENEC GmbH, a leading German provider of intelligent electricity storage systems and energy solutions, operates a suite of internal and customer-facing services such as SENEC.Cockpit, SENEC.Control, and Mein SENEC.

All of these services had their own authentication and authorization mechanisms. This led to:

  • Highly fragmented identity infrastructure with overlapping identity providers and protocols

  • Duplicated effort in access control management across applications

  • Increased maintenance overhead and operational complexity

  • Inconsistent user experience and difficulty in scaling security policies

Our Solution

Unravel designed and implemented a centralized, scalable IAM platform leveraging open-source technologies and modern security practices. The architecture introduced:

Centralized Authentication with Keycloak

  • Keycloak was adopted as the central Identity Provider (IdP), replacing siloed authentication solutions.

  • Integrated multiple external identity sources, including:

    • MEK IDP (custom enterprise IdP)

    • Azure Active Directory (for Microsoft 365 and internal access)

    • Mein SENEC (for customer logins)

  • Enabled OIDC and SAML 2.0 protocols for seamless federation

  • Deployed in high-availability mode with session clustering and database failover for resilience

  • Supported multi-tenancy and realm-based segregation for different user groups and service boundaries

Open Policy Agent (OPA) Authorization

  • OPA was embedded into applications via sidecar and SDK integrations

  • Policies were written in Rego, OPA’s declarative policy language

  • Enabled centralized policy management with version control and audit logging

  • Supported attribute-based access control (ABAC) based on user roles, request context, and resource metadata

  • Policy decision points (PDPs) externalized from application logic, improving maintainability

Monitoring & Observability

  • Prometheus collected metrics from IAM components and custom services (e.g., authentication latency, policy evaluation times, login success rates)

  • Integrated Grafana dashboards provided real-time visualizations of:

    • Login trends

    • Failed authentications

    • Policy decision distribution

    • Resource access patterns

  • OpsGenie connected to Prometheus AlertManager for real-time alerting on anomalies or outages, enabling faster incident response

The Outcome

SENEC’s new IAM infrastructure delivered:

  • Seamless Single Sign-On (SSO) experience across all services, improving UX for both customers and employees

  • A unified, scalable IAM architecture reducing operational overhead

  • Zero Trust-aligned security with centralized policy enforcement and federated identity management

  • Improved visibility and incident response through robust monitoring and alerting

This transformation positioned SENEC to securely scale its service ecosystem while maintaining centralised control over access and security policies.