Senior Engineer
As one of the world’s largest platforms for customer relationship management software, this organization strategically collaborates with private-sector partners while also maintaining its work with government agencies. This workflow presents a unique challenge: ensuring that their communications and data sharing processes were not only secure but also easy to use for their 80,000 users and external customers. The company needed a solution that could seamlessly protect sensitive information shared with strategic partners, outside agencies, and various government entities while maintaining a user-friendly experience.
A senior engineer at this organization emphasized the importance of this balance. "We share all kinds of information with our strategic partners. And we have sensitive, mission-critical documentation,” he said. “We collaborate a lot with outside agencies and we also do quite a bit of work with federal and other governments."
Achieving this equilibrium between security and usability was crucial for the company's success in both the private and public sectors. Here’s how Virtru helped them do it.
Before implementing Virtru, this organization relied on a patchwork of tools for secure collaboration. “Before Virtru, it was a host of various tools, whether it was [Google] Confidential Mode for some information, on-device encryption, and then sending encrypted attachments that way. It was really just a hodgepodge of products that may or may not have been managed by our security and business technology teams."
These disparate solutions not only lacked centralized management by the security and IT teams, but also posed potential compliance risks and usability issues for end users.
This software company's journey with Virtru began with the acquisition of a professional services firm, which had a pre-existing relationship with Virtru. The senior engineer, who became the sole admin for Virtru, found the onboarding process and management to be straightforward and user-friendly. "My experience with Virtru has been great,” he said. “The onboarding process and the management was very simple … obviously pretty easy to set up."
The organization chose Virtru for Google Workspace and Secure Share to address their secure collaboration needs, enabling secure data sharing with external partners, while still supporting strict regulations that protect CUI and DoD-IL data - along with international compliance laws in Australia, the UK, and Europe.
Virtru provided a centralized solution that streamlined compliance efforts supporting work with the state governments, the US Department of Defense, along with Australia, the United Kingdom, and Europe.
"When it comes to auditing, it's a lot easier to point to a single tool and a single source and logs for that information."
Virtru offered peace of mind for the senior engineer and the Governance, Risk, and Compliance team. "This is a much more holistic centralized approach that carries actual certifications, I think is another big piece that… helps our GRC team sleep a little bit better at night."
The deployment of Secure Share significantly reduced bottlenecks in one-time interactions, improving the user experience.
"We've gotten really good feedback from how we are supporting and deploying Virtu today, as well as some of the additional capabilities like Virtru Secure Share, which we deployed after the acquisition of [the new firm]. Virtru Secure Share really decreased the bottleneck that we were seeing with one-time [file sharing] interactions."
End users found the tool simple to use too, requiring minimal training and documentation: "It's very simple for the people to follow. There's very little complexity for the end user."
The company plans to expand Virtru's usage to the entire organization that handles government contracting work. They’re also exploring the implementation of Google Workspace client-side encryption, with Virtru as their encryption key management partner.
"I am really excited to expand [Virtru to the part of the org] doing the bulk of our government contracting work. I’m also looking forward to expanding the footprint for Secure Share as well as the investigation we're doing for Google Workspace client-side encryption."
Virtru’s admin interface is straightforward, allowing easy identification of non-compliant items and the ability to adjust settings or rescind sent items after they’ve been shared.
"There isn't a lot of complexity to the overall interface,” the senior engineer said. “It's very simple to see if things aren't compliant, or to adjust things after the fact - and fix silly mistakes that can and do happen.” This is crucial for maintaining compliance and mitigating the impact of potential mistakes in sensitive areas.
"I think that's a huge thing for any kind of admin: To be able to provide those tools to help our end users win. Especially in these sensitive areas with compliance - mistakes can have serious implications."
By adopting Virtru, this software giant successfully navigated the challenge of collaborating with private- and public-sector partners while maintaining secure and user-friendly communication and data sharing processes.
"For me, it's just been way simpler, a much better approach. And I recently had to go through some compliance audits, so it made providing evidence for those a lot easier."
The implementation of Virtru has not only streamlined compliance efforts, but also provided an intuitive user experience, enabling the company to protect sensitive information effectively while fostering seamless collaboration across both private and public sectors.
As this organization expands its usage of Virtru, they are well-equipped to meet the evolving security and compliance requirements of their industry while maintaining a user-centric approach to secure collaboration.
