By Legal Futures’ Associates iManage
iManage, the company dedicated to transforming how professionals work, today announced that Thirsk Winton LLP – a modern, innovative North-East London law firm offering a range of commercial and private client services – is continuing to build off its successful move to iManage Cloud by rolling out iManage Security Policy Manager and iManage Threat Manager for enhanced protection of sensitive client data.
“When it comes to technology, we’ve always tried to be innovative and forward-thinking,” said Jason Winton, Partner at Thirsk Winton LLP. “We’d seen larger firms in Central London successfully using iManage, and we wanted to jump straight to the best available technology to get those same types of capabilities for our firm. As a smaller firm, with an aggressive growth and acquisition strategy, iManage provides us with a powerful competitive advantage by delivering a platform that can keep pace with us as we grow and evolve, addressing all our needs – from document and email management, to security and governance.”
iManage Work 10, which Thirsk Winton accesses through iManage Cloud, provides industry leading document and email management and allows Thirsk Winton’s professionals to securely work from anywhere on any device. “Firms of our size that have not made a similar investment in technology are having a much more difficult time servicing their clients, ensuring they can continue their daily operations without interruption, and sustaining their businesses in a predominantly remote working environment. We’ve been carrying out business as usual – and iManage Cloud plays a significant role in that,” said Winton.
A Comprehensive Approach to Securing and Governing Sensitive Data While Growing
As the firm acquires other firms and ingests new matters and data, Work 10 allows all confidential customer files to be stored in a secure, centralized location.
To further ensure sensitive client matter data is secured at the highest levels and properly governed, Thirsk Winton has deployed iManage Security Policy Manager, which enables the application of need-to-know security at scale.
“In my view, need-to-know security is what every law firm should be doing now – it’s just the modern approach,” said Winton. “It doesn’t make much sense for sensitive data to be freely available to people that just don’t need to have access to it, and iManage Security Policy Manager helps us ensure everything is properly locked down.”
Using the Collections feature of Security Policy Manager allows Thirsk Winton’s fee earners, including those from newly acquired firms, to see the different matters that they’re associated with in a single collection. Meanwhile, partners are set up as ‘over the wall’ users with visibility across all workspaces.
Threat Manager provides 24/7 continuous protection of sensitive data using a combination of adaptive behavioural modelling and machine learning. Beyond providing continuous protection against internal or external threats, Threat Manager provides useful monitoring information about new hires and their usage of the document management system.
“Threat Manager is very valuable from a compliance standpoint,” said Winton. “We want to make sure new hires are storing important documents and emails in iManage. If Threat Manager’s activity reports show us that someone is not using Work 10 at all, that means they might still be using whatever system they had in place prior to being acquired. Threat Manager helps us quickly identify those situations to ensure proper compliance.”
Thirsk Winton was able to easily roll out Security Policy Manager and Threat Manager on its own, simply by drawing upon user guides and documentation provided on the iManage support site, with no additional IT resources necessary – a valuable advantage for a small firm.
“Using iManage, organisations can work safer with products that govern and secure their critical information,” said Geoff Hornsby, General Manager, EMEA, iManage. “By leveraging the iManage platform, Thirsk Winton is able to provide their professionals with the best possible products to deliver superior legal services, while ensuring that the security of client data is given the attention it demands.”
