Insurer Allianz has successfully implemented new data classification technology throughout its Ireland division.

Allianz said that it made the move to protect sensitive or valuable information assets, but needed to better understand and distinguish between the different types of information used by the organisation.

The insurer deployed the Classifier solution from provider Boldon James in July 2013, which also coincided with the company’s roll-out of Office 2010.

Allianz Ireland saw their gap audit score for data classification move from 27 per cent in 2012 to 89 per cent in 2013. Spot checks also revealed a 60 per cent improvement in employee awareness of data security practices from June 2013 to October 2013.

“We knew there was technology that would allow us to do better, but realised it would be a huge task to classify every item of information across the system, and to introduce a new culture moving forward,” explained Orla Barry, information security officer at Allianz Ireland. “We started with an initial pilot with Boldon James with 35 people across the business, which was very successful, so we rolled out the product to all 650 users.”

Martin Sugden, managing director of Boldon James, added: “One of the key considerations when working with the company was that they understood that a new culture was needed in the organisation. We worked with Allianz Ireland to ensure that what they were implementing would work within their business. We developed a new ‘bulk classification’ tool specifically for them which could assign owners to shared drives, who could then classify documents en masse.”

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