Tons of work to do, little time to spare, good relationships to maintain with clients - that’s the daily grind for BNA & Associati, a boutique law firm in Rome.
However, acting in a hyper-connected world also means slaloming between hidden threats and harsh reality.
In fact, while digital has allowed us to always be a click away, this has also meant a surge in ransomware by 700% in 2020 - in fact, one such attack is happening every 11 seconds in 2021. And while it's very important to connect decentralized offices, you need secure, easy-to-use tools to collaborate with peace of mind to keep your focus on the things that really matter.
In this cloud security case study, you'll learn how boutique law firm BNA & Associati was able to make the most of this digital age and get their work done with peace of mind.
Cloud security case study: meet BNA & Associati
"Sensitive to innovation and all the opportunities offered by technology, we want to combine this vision with the pragmatism of process simplification and cost effectiveness."
Founded by two renowned lawyers - Mario Bussoletti & Antonio Nuzzo - in 1999, Studio BNA & Associati is a boutique law firm focused on Commercial Law. Managed now by 5 university professors, this firm strongly bases its roots on the power of education, research and analysis.
Problem solvers by design and driven by a strong passion for the legal profession, BNA & Associati has a maniacal, client-centered care, paying attention to every aspect of their relationship with their clients.
"Our clients choose us because of the high quality of services we provide; the leverage cannot be price. We are a boutique company - we charge high prices, but we are customer-friendly and offer high quality services. With us, it's like going to the artisan. "
Avoid online threats and keep your focus on the things that matter
This obsessive attention to detail is what led BNA & Associati from the beginning (i.e., the year 1999) to prefer its own private server to standard cloud storage solutions when it comes to storing and sharing sensitive data.
"We're no longer in the 'age of legal paper,' we live in a world of video files, audio files… law firms today are digitizing their processes."
That's great because working digitally has a lot of benefits, but the tools also need to be easy to use - in fact, the culture of digitization in this industry is very low.
"It's also hard to deal with all the threats there are - says Angelo Sgroi, office manager at BNA & Associati - Francesco (our IT guy), periodically warns me that we have hundreds of threats every day.
You can't live like this - if something happens and we stop work for 2 days, you can't even imagine how much that means in money and problems with clients we had good relationships with..."
Related reading: How to protect data in the cloud: 9 best tips of 2021
Add in the fact that mentally restarting from an outage takes 84 minutes + 50 minutes of stress and fatigue - plus the problem of hardware failure (Washington Post), this becomes a very heavy price to bear.
Speaking of mental interruption, another factor highlighted by BNA & Associati was having everything on a single, secure network so that people could access all the documents they needed without asking Francesco, the IT guy, for server permissions.
Simply put, in this cloud security case study, BNA & Associati needed a tool that:
- Connected all decentralized offices and people working from home on a single network.
- Protected their data and outsourced IT issues in fixing them instead of focusing on the things that matter.
- Easy to use.
Along the way they tried several options:
- Dropbox: neither integrated, secure "when it comes to law firms, the IT culture is very low and the complexity makes us avoid complex solutions".
- Onedrive: not very secure and, being repeatable, did not fit their vision of a boutique law firm. Therefore, they preferred to use the in-house server.
- Internal server: was the preferred solution since 1999, but brought some issues in terms of space (e.g., 100GB saturated the server) and IT headaches.
- A mix: “We've tried Dropbox, our in-house tool, Jumbo Mail, Wetransfer… all together! But it's not serious for a law firm to use something different every time, nor is it safe."
And even though this need in the legal world was unanswered, the tireless research attitude of these five college professors led them to find a way out - by meeting Cubbit.
Cubbit: zero-knowledge cloud storage with ease of use
"The legal world needs to share files and resources with clients and internally, securely. This is a context where the needs around files make the use of tools like Cubbit essential."
Cubbit is a super easy-to-use, drag-and-drop tool and the first distributed cloud storage provider in Europe. Its services go beyond current market standards of security and privacy - in fact, thanks to its zero-knowledge technology, no one, (not even the service provider!) can read the data being uploaded.
"Certainly, the ability to have 40 people accessing the server quickly and easily wherever they are is a feature that in the wake of the pandemic is critical. And connecting our decentralized offices on a single, ultra-secure network is critical - Cubbit is our single source of truth when it comes to managing files and sensitive data."
Unlike other solutions on the market, Cubbit also allows for unrestricted, professional uploading and sharing of large volumes of data. "We were sending data through a mainstream mix of tools like Wetransfer and Jumbomail - this was invalidating our professionalism."
To conclude this cloud security case study, adopting Cubbit has also meant cost savings for BNA & Associati: "you no longer need a remote VPN license and don't spend money on data loss, and it has also improved the focus of all staff, eliminating all the previous bottlenecks we had."
Do you agree with BNA & Associati? Join Next Generation Cloud - the first distributed cloud network reserved to pioneer companies. Otherwise, you can try Cubbit for free for 30 days — no credit card required.
