Atrium Underwriters

Introducing innovative solutions to facilitate home-working and BYOD utilising MobileIron and RSA Technologies

"We've got a suite of expertise available to us by working with BlueFort that we would otherwise need to find ourselves. BlueFort are an extension of our IT team." Garry Lewis, Head of IT, Atrium Underwriters

Key challenges
  • Cloud migration project unlocking new security concerns
  • Requirement for specialist expert advice and insights
  • Management overhead caused by tandem support of legacy and new systems
  • 24x7 nature of threats driving a need for heightened vigilance
About Atrium

Based in the Lloyd’s of London building, Atrium Underwriters is a long-established leading specialist insurance and reinsurance business. Operating within the Lloyd’s market and with a history dating back to the 1930’s, Atrium Underwriters are security conscious to their core. Like many companies in the insurance sector, data security is paramount to their business. Over the last 12 years BlueFort has partnered with the IT team. Within this time, BlueFort has introduced innovative solutions to strengthen Atrium’s data security posture; working to defend against and minimise the potential effects of a breach.

Technical Solution

Noticing a recent increase in appetite for home working, Atrium approached BlueFort to discuss their plans to implement cloud-based infrastructure and BYOD as they had some concerns about delivering a positive user experience while ensuring that their data security wasn’t compromised. After listening to Atrium’s requirements, BlueFort recommended solutions including RSA’s Identity based Multi-Factor Authentication and MobileIron’s Enterprise Mobility Management which have helped Atrium maintain their strong security posture without compromising the user’s experience. 

Commenting on this, Garry Lewis, Head of IT at Atrium Underwriters explains, “RSA is a great authentication platform, because we can now extend it to authenticate cloud applications as well as our traditional remote access use cases. Atrium is going through a lot of change so it’s great for both our IT team and our end users that we can use technology that we are familiar with and we can be assured that it’s secure. BlueFort were on hand throughout the process for any queries that we had.”

The future is cloud

As part of the upgrade to the Authentication system, another recent project Atrium has completed was to secure and ensure resilience of traditional Authentication services to a multi-cloud environment. Working with the BlueFort team they have been able to implement RSA Authentication software on both Azure and AWS cloud environments which has meant that they have the peace of mind that they can switch seamlessly between platforms should they need to, without any disruption to the end user. BlueFort supported Atrium with vendor negotiations, proof of concept, installation, configuration, training and ongoing support.

Consultative account management

The trust built between the two companies allows Atrium the space to get on with delivering best in class secure services to their clients and users. Garry and the team enjoy regular strategic dialogue with BlueFort in order to ensure that they are kept abreast of new IT security developments, whilst being able to bounce ideas off of BlueFort Security Experts on demand. Garry described “BlueFort are eager to listen to us, but careful about what they suggest to us. We talk in depth about the solution with their pre-sales team before installation or POC to ensure it would benefit our environment.” Due to the vendor neutrality of BlueFort, the team at Atrium can discuss other projects with BlueFort and see if there is a technology or solution they could consider. The trust built throughout their partnership provides the space to research and test technologies that are of interest and bring those ideas to BlueFort and in return should there be a new, innovative solution or way for the team to save money or time, BlueFort will suggest it –It’s a great relationship that works well.”

Swift resolutions and escalations

With their tight vendor partnerships, BlueFort are able to swiftly escalate and resolve 24 x 7 any technical issues on behalf of Atrium. Craig Duff, IT Infrastructure Engineer at Atrium Underwriters explains, “We have total confidence in the BlueFort support desk team, they are not fazed by issues that we take to them and they know our set up intimately. If we need any issues escalating, BlueFort have the contacts and relationships with key IT Security vendors to get issues rectified swiftly. Without that support we would potentially struggle to speak to the right person so it really benefits us that BlueFort can liaise on our behalf. We value being kept in the loop but not having to completely own issues. BlueFort Evolve lets us solve issues and implement technologies quicker.”

Benefits of BlueFort's Evolve Support

Atrium Underwriters enjoy the flexibility and support offered through BlueFort Evolve. Helping to plug any resource or skillset gaps as and when required. Commenting on this Garry explained: “I would definitely recommend BlueFort Evolve support, the service is extremely valuable to us. Being a small team and not having exposure to all new technologies and features it really helps us having that expertise available to us. We use the Evolve service to ensure that our systems are always running latest versions and are best protected at all times. Without Evolve, we would have to get in additional resource for bespoke deployments and we would certainly have to spend a lot of time in the research phase to make sure we are buying the right technology. We use BlueFort’s expertise to guide us down the right path - I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend them.”