Read how Thirsk Winton uses iManage for M&A security and governance

The rollout of cutting-edge need-to-know security and threat detection products from iManage has allowed Thirsk Winton to continue building on the advantages of iManage Cloud.

Thirsk Winton, an innovative law firm in North-East London offering a range of commercial and private client services, recently rolled out iManage Security Policy Manager and iManage Threat Manager for enhanced protection of sensitive client data.

Through iManage Work 10, which the firm accesses through iManage Cloud, Thirsk Winton’s professionals can securely work from anywhere on any device with industry-leading document and email management.

As a smaller firm with an aggressive growth and acquisition strategy, iManage provides Thirsk Winton with a powerful competitive advantage, delivering a platform that can keep pace with the firm as it grows and evolves.

Jason Winton, partner at the firm, says he had seen larger firms in central London successfully using iManage, and wanted to jump straight to the best available technology to get those same types of capabilities. “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,” he says.

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, centralised 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,” says 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,” says 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.