Project at a glance
4 New Square needed a secure cloud collaboration solution that would protect highly sensitive legal data while helping barristers meet strict compliance and confidentiality requirements. With Tresorit, the chambers gained a secure way to store and share files, reduce the risk of data breaches, and reassure clients that their information is handled with the highest level of security.
The challenge
Like many industries, IT has revolutionised the way in which law firms work. Legal professionals rely on an ever-expanding set of online systems to do everything from communicating with clients to filing documents with the court.
This has however brought security challenges, especially as lawyers tend to focus on their core role – practicing law – at the expense of time spent learning about and implementing good data security practices. Therefore, it is natural that IT directors have security concerns when it comes to moving data to the cloud.
"Barristers can be overly trusting of cloud platforms not necessarily knowing what that cloud platform is, where and in what state their data is being held in" - explains Ian Wheeler, IT Manager at 4 New Square, a leading commercial set of barristers chambers based in London.
However, the legal sector has to be secure as barristers are dealing with very sensitive information covering high profile cases. And even though barristers are individual practitioners, the entirety of the chamber can be affected by one individual leak pertaining to one individual barrister on one individual case - adds Ian.
A breach of confidential data can not only entail serious monetary aspects from ICO but also cause serious reputational damage. Further to that, there’s a number of regulations such as the GDPR, ICO and Bar Council guidelines that barristers need to comply with when managing and storing data. In addition, not only chambers themselves but their clients as well have to be reassured that their data is being managed correctly.
The solution
That is why 4 New Square started harmonising and bringing together all the data and cloud programmes used by their members of chambers, such as Dropbox, pCloud and OneDrive. The issue they faced was that the security around these products wasn’t necessarily known. So they decided to look at the market in search for a secure solution and started discussions with several providers.
"Tresorit offered the most complete solution in covering all aspects regarding the security of data and compliance with data protection requirements. By bringing all data together in Tresorit we knew exactly what we were dealing with as opposed to other platforms where we didn’t know where the data was, how it was stored and transferred" explained Wheeler.
The implementation
"Tresorit’s most important feature is end-to-end encryption. That’s something you don’t see in other products. However, while being super secure, Tresorit is also very easy to use. From the end-users’ perspective, syncing and sharing folders couldn’t be easier." Ian explains and adds that the initial take up has been excellent in chambers with 90% of 4 New Square’s users now working with Tresorit on a daily basis.
"Features like being able to access documents on mobile devices is fantastic. Barristers can share information in a secure fashion when on the go. Tresorit creates a secure environment for us to store case-critical information and allows barristers to control who has access to the data and for how long. Tresorit users can put download limits, set passwords for extra protection, and simply revoke access as they wish." states Ian.
The results
"The automatic, end-to-end encryption is the best thing about Tresorit by far. The company has also been very proactive in listening to our feedback and the product is constantly developing and adjusting to the market needs. For us, it was the perfect fit" concluded Ian.
