 |
||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||
LLOYDS OF LONDON - OWA ATTACHVIEW |
Members of Lloyd’s, or ‘capital providers’ as they are often known, accept insurance business through syndicates on a several basis for their own profit and loss (in other words, members of Lloyd’s are not jointly responsible for each other’s losses). The membership of Lloyd’s is currently made up of companies, individuals and Scottish Limited Partnerships. Individual members, or ‘Names’ as they are often known,
tend to support a number of syndicates, whereas some corporate members only underwrite through a single syndicate.
Lloyd’s members conduct their insurance business in syndicates, each of which is run by a managing agent.
There are 66 syndicates operating within the market, covering many speciality areas including marine, aviation, catastrophe, professional indemnity and motor. Syndicates tailor solutions to respond to the specific risks of the client base.
Throughout the syndicates and with clients e-mail is heavily relied upon for business communications. The challenge faced by the Lloyd’s Information Technology Group was how to offer a secure e-mail service across desktops and networks that would not always be under the direct control of the central IT function.
Having established Microsoft Exchange as its core messaging system, Outlook Web Access (OWA) seemed to be the ‘natural progression’ for supporting remote and roaming users: OWA could give e-mail access from any Web browser session – be it in an Internet café, at home, in an airport lounge or a hotel lobby.
Secure access
The financial services sector is naturally very concerned about the security of its data at all times and Lloyd’s is no exception. Lloyd’s had to ensure that the use of Web-based e-mail did not expose it to any security risks.
“We needed to balance a workable and usable solution while maintaining maximum security requirements when providing Internet based access to corporate e-mail,” explains Tim Martin, senior research and development technical Specialist at Lloyd’s Information Technology Group. “We stipulated that control had to be maintained over the data on the Lloyd’s e- mail servers at all times.”
A possible gap in using Web-based e-mail was the issue of opening e-mail attachments as when OWA users open an e-mail attachment, it is stored in the Web browser’s file cache. The information stored within the cache could then potentially be accessed by anyone that uses the same computer, even after the original user has logged off from the OWA Web session.
Solution
Martin and his team realized they needed to protect the integrity of Lloyd’s sensitive financial information with a robust easy to install and implement solution. Lloyd’s Information Security team chose Messageware AttachView for Outlook Web Access based on an exhaustive search for the best possible answer for securing Internet based e-mail. AttachView overcomes attachment caching by automatically converting e-mail attachments into secured Web pages, which are non-cached HTML files.
With AttachView users can quickly and easily view or print over 200 types of attachments without needing the associated application that created the original file. For example Microsoft Office and Adobe Acrobat PDF files can be instantly opened and viewed from the user’s Web browser without either Microsoft Word or Adobe Acrobat Reader on the users system. This is of great benefit to remote and roving users in particular.
“Combining the abilities of our SSL VPN solution and Messageware AttachView we were able to control which devices can have full access to attachments and which devices can only view attachments. With AttachView we do not have to take into account where the end users are logging in from and they will be able to maximise their use of the system from wherever they are,” notes Martin.
Flexibilty
“We try and offer flexible working arrangements and OWA with Messageware AttachView helps Lloyd’s achieve this,” says Martin, “Messageware has enabled Lloyd’s to offer a controlled and secure Internet-based e-mail system that will help increase both efficiency and productivity from employees who are travelling or working from home.”
Messageware’s AttachView enables Lloyd’s to meet the needs of all employees. “Whilst the ability to access corporate e-mail systems via an Internet connection is fairly straight forward, the management of how that data can be accessed and where that data can be left is not so easy,” notes Martin. “Messageware AttachView goes a long way to enabling a
realistic working solution into the management of where and how e-mail attachments are accessed and downloaded.”
|
