A safe distance: sharing uber-valuable intelligence across borders and in the cloud

A risky business

For Paddy Beiner, managing director of Bearstone Global’s Berlin office and partner in the holding company’s head office in Warsaw, risk is not just part of the game. It’s the name of the game. The business intelligence and investigations company helps clients identify risk related issues in all aspects of their operations: clients and supplier relationships, financial dealings, investments and court proceedings, to name but a few. “We primarilly focus on Western, Central and Eastern Europe but we’re operating globally, including in the Middle East, Africa and Southeast Asia. Pretty much wherever our clients need us,” Paddy sums up. The company is headquartered in Warsaw but also has subsidiaries in Berlin and London with full-time staff, plus an extensive partner network across the globe.

“We help our clients with due diligence, litigation support, asset searches, tracing individuals, and other business intelligence-related work. So essentially what we do is help them make an informed decision prior to undertaking some sort of business venture or some other event that’s potentially damaging to them. We’d refer to that as a pre-event assignment. In a post-event assignment, where the damage has already been done, we help the client to figure out what happened and how to prevent it from happening again in the future, and also help them determine whether they can recover any of the losses they’ve suffered,” Paddy says. The information and intelligence gathered in the process is the company’s biggest asset. Meaning that when their previous cloud service provider went out of business a few years back, they needed another one, fast.

Security in cross-border collaboration

Paddy recalls: “Our previous supplier actually recommended Tresorit. We looked at a number of other options, but in the end, we chose Tresorit because it basically ticked all the boxes.” When asked who uses Tresorit at the company, he says: “Everyone. It’s a fundamental part of how we work. Not only do we use it, but a number of our clients have started using it too because of us. We’ve also given limited access to certain tresors to some of our associates who are not full-time staff members but regular collaborators.” They don’t even save documents to their desktops anymore. Or use paper, for that matter. None of the work that the company does is physically present anywhere besides their tresors.

Being able to securely share the information they’ve gathered is just as important as storing it, of course. Paddy and his colleagues rely on Tresorit as their main team collaboration tool: people working in different countries have their own tresors that they can use as depository. “When we work extensively with someone, they will be part of our business subscription. We give them access and all the work that they do for us will be uploaded to that tresor. We have different tresors for different subcontractors and different clients, as well. We don’t send anything in email to clients anymore; we send encrypted links, or they just check their own tresors and it’s there,” Paddy explains.

Putting clients' mind at ease about security

Bearstone Global did not only become an avid user of Tresorit but also its advocate. When the GDPR was coming into force and people were becoming more aware of how the new regulations would affect them, clients started writing to Paddy and his colleagues, asking what cloud storage they used. “Around five of our clients started using Tresorit based on our recommendation and they’re very happy with it,” Paddy says. And they’re very happy with the consulting firm, too.

“A lot of the work that we do for our clients is very sensitive. In most cases, only the CEO, CFO and COO are privy to the information that we provide. Most of the time when we share a report, the link is password protected, active only for 48 hours and can only be accessed once. This level of security is essential for our business. It shows clients how much we care about the security of what we’re doing for them. And Tresorit is the only solution that gives us this level of control,” he explains.

Interested in learning more about the benefits of Tresorit's sync and sharing service? Check out the following material:

• Secure online storage and backup in the cloud
• Secure file sharing inside and outside your company
• GDPR ready cloud