Darling Insurance Builds Out Infrastructure to Better Serve Customers

A 2018 ICTA nomination

Toronto, ON (Jan. 15, 2018) – With 12 offices across Ontario, Darling Insurance’s (Darling) head office hosted their local servers and network infrastructure in an effort to deliver their applications to all team members. Darling recognized the need for a more robust, scalable and reliable solution capable of serving their entire team and clients in the always-connected broker marketplace.

While evaluating technology options during their annual technology review, special consideration was spent on cloud services. With the goal of increasing service reliability and looking for tools that allow staff to be more productive, engaged and responsive, Darling found that off-the-shelf cloud solutions were too restrictive or cumbersome for their business. In determining their need for a uniquely designed environment, Darling Insurance opted to build their own private cloud powered and supported by Fortify Network Solutions Inc. (Fortify).

By physically hosting their servers and storage in a highly secured data center via Rogers Enterprise, Darling Insurance has improved operational efficiency, freed up IT resources and budget while increasing the reliability of service delivery to all branch offices. By taking advantage of multiple redundant internet connections, battery and diesel power backup, state of the art environmental controls and fire suppression, Darling Insurance ensures that the lights are on even when the power is out.

With the blueprint for the digital brokerage requiring an always-connected business, Darling Insurance understands the importance of connectivity and potential security threats that can impact their business. Multiple internet connections securely connect every transaction, communication and endpoint using redundant Cisco enterprise-class firewalls with universal threat management and web security provided by a Sophos Secure Web Gateway. This layered approach to service delivery coupled with monitoring and alerting provided by Fortify, ensures that staff and client data are accurately protected from threats, malware and attackers, while providing high availability working environments. Staff and clients never have to wait for services to come back online.

Protecting all of this from inadvertent disasters, including ransomware attacks, physical damage, malicious employees and/or human error, Darling Insurance has deployed a comprehensive data backup and business continuity solution provided by Fortify. Darling Insurance is able to easily protect any physical or virtual infrastructure running via their private cloud, and recover lost servers in minutes. Backups occur automatically on an hourly basis to a local server and are replicated to the cloud across bi-coastal Canadian datacenters. Staff and client data is always protected while never leaving Canadian borders.

Recovery of granular data is quickly made possible from multiple points in time, and the use of local virtualization, the cloud backup —or both—ensures that Darling Insurance is able to get back to business in minutes, not days, ensuring that their team and clients are able to access the services they require to keep their business moving forward.

By deploying next generation Citrix solutions, Darling Insurance is delivering application and desktop access to staff securely from any device. This provides their leadership team and frontline staff access to the tools, data and resources they need to get the job done, regardless of their physical location.

By taking advantage of modern next generation IT practices, and with the technology leadership and expertise of Fortify Network Solutions Inc., Darling Insurance is able to provide consistent, agile, secure and reliable IT services to all of their offices and team members while protecting their data and ensuring maximum uptime.

Benefits

As a direct result of implementing a private cloud solution lead by Fortify, Darling Insurance experienced a reduction in helpdesk and service tickets while increasing availability and reliability to key business applications and services.

Compared to the same time period in 2016, Darling Insurance experienced a 30% decrease in service tickets and system errors after implementing their private cloud.
These service improvements were successfully implemented while achieving a cost savings of 56% when comparing their implementation, support and maintenance costs versus implementing public cloud or canned cloud offerings from competitors over 4 years.

Thanks to Darling Insurance and Fortify’s continued partnership, Darling Insurance has demonstrated that they are a technology leader in the Canadian P&C marketplace.

About Darling Insurance

Darling Insurance has been a household name for insurance in East Central Ontario since 1928.

In July 2017, Darling Insurance and JWK Insurance merged parts of their companies to form Sentinel Risk Insurance Group Limited. Sentinel is well positioned to expand upon JWK’s sales culture and commercial expertise, while being able to take advantage of technical and administrative services provided by Darling Insurance’s head office.

With 12 offices across Ontario, Darling Insurance and associated companies use modern and next generation IT services, tools and resources to deliver predictable, secure and fast services for their staff and clients.

About Fortify Network Solutions Inc.

The team at Fortify Network Solutions has spent more than two decades designing, deploying and supporting hundreds of networks for small and large Insurance Brokers across Canada. A commitment to investing in new skills and technology through continued education is a key factor in Fortify Network Solutions’ ongoing success. Fortify’s team of sales and network professionals hold certifications with Microsoft, Citrix and Datto, just to name a few.

SOURCE: Darling Insurance

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