As Ransomware surges, Maurice Blackburn Lawyers puts Mimecast on the case
As Ransomware surges, Maurice Blackburn Lawyers puts Mimecast on the case
Solution
- Email Continuity
- Secure Email Gateway with Targeted Threat Protection (URL Protect, Attachment Protect and Impersonation Protect)
- Internal Email Protect
- Email Archiving
Benefit
- With its email made both more reliable and more accessible, Maurice Blackburn is exploring how related products such as Mimecast’s Internal Email Protect can further improve messaging security and how the Mimecast service enable even better archiving and searching for legal discovery purposes
Challenge
Over the past few years, Maurice Blackburn Lawyers has experienced an increase in malware infiltrating its email system. Although most attempts were thwarted, IT staff found themselves spending considerable time resolving the remaining malware that managed to slip through.
A few particularly damaging ransomware infections consumed valuable time wiping and restoring the affected systems, prompting the IT department to begin exploring options to improve email security and simplify the firm’s storage-heavy disaster-recovery setup.
Solution
This led to the firm implementing Mimecast’s security cloud service, which provided centralised security and management of its email system. The Mimecast solution was relatively easy to implement with a small amount of user training and change management required. It has also substantially improved email security for the firm and is highly effective at blocking malicious URLs and attachments and preventing users from being affected by malware.
“The immediate benefit was not having to deal with Cryptolocker and those sorts of attacks,” said Brett Johnstone, the firm’s chief information officer.
“We never really lost anything from them – we just wiped devices and started again – but there was significant overhead to deal with. It wasn’t the most effective or efficient approach to mitigating the risks that we were seeing.”
Mr Johnstone said email security was only part of the value that Mimecast has brought to the firm’s operations. With a centralised, cloud-based email store now in place, the firm has also improved its disaster-recovery capabilities. For instance, instead of maintaining a continuous redundant messaging environment, Mimecast’s robust continuity capabilities mean the entire firm can access crucial correspondence quickly – even in the event of a network or email system failure.
Summary
By substantially improving the detection and blocking of malicious emails, files, and URLs, Mimecast has enabled the law firm’s IT staff to dedicate their time to other important tasks. The transition has also provided cost benefits by enabling the firm to defer or eliminate capital expenditures for on-premise server storage, and has also improved business continuity with ubiquitous access to a secure cloud-based email store.
“With Mimecast we can get the benefits of email archiving without impacting the user experience. It’s extremely low touch and it works well.”
Brett Johnstone - CIO, Maurice Blackburn Lawyers