Success Story: Leading Insurance Provider Protects 15TB+ of Sensitive Data with SecureZIP®

Company Background
Our client works to position itself as a “one-stop benefits shop” for employers, providing accident, life, and disability insurance. The company’s medical plans cover nearly 12 million individuals. Related businesses, such as dental plans, behavioral care management programs, and pharmacy benefits management cover more than 32 million people.

Challenges and Requirements
The company’s project team was beginning a document management project that would last approximately 30-60 days. The project required digitizing over five hundred 30GB optical disks containing Personal Health Information (PHI). The resulting 15TB+ of converted data needed to be sent from document repositories on the west coast to repositories hosted and managed several states away.

Before information could be transferred from one facility to another, an internal group mandated that all data be encrypted during the transfer, so it would remain secure both in transit and at rest on the receiving machine.

Wanting to avoid expensive “white-glove” shipping methods, the project team needed a solution that would not only encrypt the data, but also remain fast enough to keep up with the conversion process. The internal group suggested SecureZIP as an approved multi-platform solution.

The team also wanted to eliminate potential failure points and bottlenecks during the exchange process, while mitigating potential risk associated with their current workflow process.

The Solution – SecureZIP
The project team quickly realized that SecureZIP would solve their security issues, while still providing the necessary compression of data. The team worked with PKWARE® to obtain the required licenses for the duration of the project.

Using SecureZIP Server, the project team was able to zip and encrypt the data on the source AIX® system in California at a much faster rate. Encrypted discs were sent to the off-site facility, and then decrypted and unzipped on the destination AIX machine.

The new process took just three steps and eliminated any data from being sent unprotected “in the clear:”

1. Information was compressed and encrypted on the originating AIX machine and stored on discs
2. Encrypted discs were sent to receiving destination
3. Information was decrypted and unzipped on the receiving AIX machine

After SecureZIP was installed on the IBM® servers, the team was able to encrypt 30GB of converted data for each optical disk in approximately 11 minutes, using AES 256-bit encryption algorithm. The encryption rate easily kept pace with the conversion process and data was then shipped via a standard overnight courier.

SecureZIP ensures that corporate data remains protected throughout the entire exchange process, avoiding the need for more expensive or complex solutions. SecureZIP also streamlined the exchange process, providing a cost-effective and efficient solution for sending vast amounts of PHI data to remote locations.