Case Study - Seyfarth Shaw
Seyfarth turns to Kiteworks for an easy-to-use mobile solution that lets attorneys share sensitive client information securely and in compliance.
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Seyfarth Shaw Bolsters Legal Excellence With Secure Mobile File Sharing
Seyfarth Shaw provides a broad range of legal services with a focus on labor and employment, employee benefits, litigation, corporate, and real estate. With more than 800 attorneys in the U.S. and in London, the firm’s clients include over 300 of the Fortune 500 companies, reflecting virtually every industry and segment of the economy.
Two words sum up Seyfarth’s mission: legal excellence. To achieve that goal on an everyday basis, the firm is focused on doing whatever is needed to deliver high-quality legal services. This includes optimizing the way attorneys communicate with clients. They must get casework and related documents into the right hands as quickly as possible, while keeping this sensitive information secure in the process.
Moving Beyond FTP
For Seyfarth, FTP was no longer sufficient. The firm’s Microsoft Exchange environment was suffering, with large file transfers impeding system performance and frustrating users. Yet, it was business as usual across the firm’s 11 offices. Seyfarth’s attorneys needed to share and collaborate with clients on large, sensitive files in compliance with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) and other data privacy regulations.
“Kiteworks has proven its worth each and every day. The solution plays a critical role in helping us find a better way to meet clients’ evolving needs for efficiency—what our business is all about.”
– Andy Jurczyk, CIO, Seyfarth Shaw
So, what were Seyfarth attorneys to do? “First, we had to educate users about the huge security risks of using consumer-focused solutions like Dropbox,” explains Andy Jurczyk, CIO for Seyfarth Shaw. “Then, we had to move fast to deploy a mobile file sharing solution that would protect our sensitive data and allow users to access, view, and share information at any time from any type of device.”
To ensure that files were truly secure, the firm also required that the chosen solution could encrypt data in transit and at rest, integrate with Active Directory for administrative control, and provide detailed reporting and tracking functionality for visibility into file senders and recipients.
“I used Kiteworks at my previous law firm, SNR Denton, and knew what the solution could deliver,” Jurczyk recalls. “Fast forward to Seyfarth Shaw and Kiteworks fit the bill again. So, we deployed the Kiteworks platform and haven’t looked back.”
Case Study
Seyfarth Shaw Bolsters Legal Excellence With Secure Mobile File Sharing
Achieving Significant Benefits
Like much of the corporate world, Seyfarth’s attorneys and clients rely on iPads and other devices to keep projects moving forward at all hours of the day. With Kiteworks’ mobile app, attorneys and clients easily share documents whenever and wherever, significantly boosting productivity. Users can securely save files on their devices for future offline use, and IT benefits from up-to-date reporting on what files have been sent and to whom.
“Our employees have quickly grown used to ubiquitous access to digital data,” Jurczyk observes. “We have an obligation to our clients to make certain that their information is transported in a secure, managed, and trackable manner and Kiteworks makes that possible.”
With Kiteworks, users also no longer worry about file size limits. Seyfarth optimizes its email exchange performance by automatically offloading large files to Kiteworks. Currently, any file larger than 100 MB is routed through Kiteworks, but the firm plans to drop that number to 50 MB to drive even more email efficiency gains.
The firm credits Kiteworks’ around-the-clock reliability, mobile app authentication, and AES 128-bit encryption with ensuring attorney-client privilege is maintained.
“Kiteworks has proven its worth each and every day,” Jurczyk concludes. “The platform plays a critical role in helping us find a better way to meet clients’ evolving needs for efficiency—what our business is all about.”
Needs
- Replace FTP infrastructure that caused Microsoft Exchange performance issues and led frustrated users to find unsecure workarounds
- Enable attorneys and clients to collaborate remotely, and offline at times
Kiteworks Solution
- Kiteworks Secure File Sharing
Business Impact
- Enhanced attorney-client privilege with improved secure file sharing
- Improved email system performance via offloading large files to Kiteworks
“Our employees have quickly grown used to ubiquitous access to digital data. We have an obligation to our clients to make certain that their information is transported in a secure, managed, and trackable manner and Kiteworks makes that possible.”
– Andy Jurczyk, CIO, Seyfarth Shaw
