Insurance brokerage firm enables a secure mobile workforce with an easy to use solution – Citrix ShareFile

Lockton is the world's largest privately owned independent insurance brokerage firm. Energy, innovation, and deep expertise fuel their focus on solving clients' problems and achieving real results. Lockton's dedicated team of 5,600+ Associates becomes partners with their 48,000+ clients, providing unparalleled access to experts around the globe.

The Challenge: Lockton needed a single solution to address new mobility requirements and allow easy and secure file sharing with clients

Lockton was facing roadblocks with their current consumer file sharing solution. The tool wasn't user friendly, making it difficult to deliver files to Lockton's clients and carriers.

The IT department knew they needed to find the right file sharing solution, not only to address current issues, but to solve for some newly identified requirements for their organization. To support their mobile workforce, one of the additional requirements included a secure solution that provided mobile data access from any device. This would allow Associates to work, collaborate, and communicate at anytime, from any device, both internally and externally.

Another critical requirement included the flexibility to choose where data is stored – on-premises, in the cloud, or a combination of both – to meet their specific needs for data sovereignty, compliance, performance, and costs. To ensure complete control over their data, Lockton also wanted their new tool to offer advanced security features for authentication and authorization, access control and secure collaboration, device security, remote wipe, device lock, passcode protection, whitelisting and blacklisting, and data expiration policies.

"Our IT Managers from across the US worked together to determine the requirements from the solution we wanted to put in place. ShareFile was the solution that met all of those requirements," said Jamie Lucker, Technology Advocate at Lockton.

The Solution: Secure mobile workspace suite, including file sharing services, that is easy to use and accessible from any device

Citrix technology is already essential to Lockton's virtual environment, since they are currently using XenDesktop Platinum and XenApp. When the requirements for a secure mobile workspace and integrated enterprise file sync and sharing (EFSS) solution arose, they turned to Citrix. Lockton deployed Citrix Workspace Suite to deliver secure access to apps, desktops, data, and services from any device, over any network to empower mobile workers with the freedom and flexibility to choose how they work. With ShareFile integrated into that solution, Lockton was also able to address their file sharing requirements to share, sync, and secure content from the cloud and on-premises storage services.

Lockton believes Citrix Workspace Suite is a complete, integrated mobility solution that has helped their organization become more productive. They use ShareFile to provide access to data and files, in sync, across all their devices; to address collaboration needs with sharing of large files, internally or externally; to mobilize existing data in the network; and to ensure IT control over data storage, encryption, and access policies.

Key Benefits

Ease of use and ability to allow remote workers access to data from anywhere

Associates can now share information with other Associates and clients through an easy-to-use solution. ShareFile has increased productivity by enabling Associates to spend less time finding data and trying to get it where it is supposed to be. "Underwriters have been praising ShareFile. I've been told several times that it is the best file sharing system any broker has," said Lucker, Technology Advocate.

Lockton Global serves clients in more than 100 countries worldwide across multiple offices in the US and internationally. Since a large proportion of Lockton's workforce is in the field, anywhere access to data is a business priority. They need access to data from wherever they were. ShareFile allows these Associates to use any device, which at Lockton consists mostly of iPhones, iPads, and Android devices, and instantly get connected to their data. "Our Loss Control teams are able to easily upload pictures of issues they find in the field using their mobile devices to ShareFile. They can then share that data immediately with clients and carriers, so those risks can be addressed right away," said Lucker, Technology Advocate.

Offers flexible data storage and provides data security

A top priority within any organization is having a secure solution in place for people to share data. Lockton turned to Citrix ShareFile as it offered a secure data sync and sharing service with flexible storage options. For IT, ShareFile also provided comprehensive capabilities to track log and report on user file access, sync and sharing activity, including the date, type, place, and network address of each user event and ability to set data expiration. "Being able to expire a link after a certain amount of time, validate who has access to files, get notified when someone downloads a file, and track to see if a file had been opened is why ShareFile provides much more flexibility than our previous solution," said Lucker, Technology Advocate.

Easy implementation

Lockton took advantage of the Citrix Product Adoption consulting service, which facilitated the implementation. "The production adoption program has made it easy for us to keep the project on track and within scope," said Lucker – Technology Advocate.

Looking Ahead

ShareFile empowers our associates to work from anywhere, on any type of device! Culturally people don't sit at their desks anymore. Being mobile and having associates specific devices in place of their desktop, is the right kind of solution,” Jamie Lucker – Technology Advocate. Lockton looks forward to having more use cases arise as the solution expands within their organization. ShareFile has allowed Lockton the ability to get data from anywhere while offering an easy to use approach that’s secure. Another value add that the Citrix ShareFile team was able to provide Lockton was around their Product Adoption consulting service. “ The production adoption program has made it easy for us to keep things on track and run smoothly,” Lucker – Technology Advocate.