Hedges Law, an employee-owned UK law firm, has partnered with Cloudify Legal, a tech consultancy for the legal sector, to implement a Zero Trust Network (ZTN).
Hedges Law’s aim was to achieve high cyber security with total remote working capability at an affordable cost. The traditional model, which consists of a business' own network, firewalls, and hardware, requires a substantial investment and maintenance. Hedges Law decided to take the ZTN approach with Google’s Chrome Enterprises and NEOWAVE’s FIDO secure keys to keep costs low without compromising security risk, following Cloudify Legal’s recommendation.
A ZTN is a security model which maintains strict access controls and does not trust any device by default. The ZTN approach advocates mutual authentication and provides access to the network based on the confidence of device identity and device health in combination with user authentication
Wayne Pollock, Partner, Cloudify Legal said, “modern cyber threats require modern defensive solutions. Chrome Enterprise and NEOWAVE offer just that. A reliable, secure design and a super low-cost solution. Large corporations worldwide are abandoning traditional network security models in droves due to operational expense and the significant data / cyber security risk. Sadly, smaller law firms are still being mis-sold the traditional tech stack, often disguised as Cloud, Hosted, or Managed Desktops. Vendors don't push ZTN solutions because they would make no money.”
Hedges Law chose NEOWAVE’s Winkeo FIDO U2F via UK-based distributor Open Seas. All 50 employees have been given the key and are required to use it to authenticate their log in when a new device or IP address is detected by Google.
Overall, Hedges Law saved £48,000 per year on its Network Infrastructure costs when compared to the nearest competitor without compromising security protection. Implementation by Cloudify Legal of the Winkeo FIDO U2F keys and Chrome Enterprises system across the organisation took no longer than one working day.
Karen Edwards, Operations Director, Hedges Law added, “the risk of cyber-attacks is on the rise with 39 per cent of businesses reporting cyber-attacks or breaches in the past 12 months. The legal sector is no exception. We were looking for a modern solution that delivers enhanced security from cyber-attacks, simple implementation, comes at an affordable price, and is easy to use on a day-to-day basis for our size practice. I’m happy to say that the products from Google and NEOWAVE delivered just that.”