Crawford & Company Accelerates Cloud Migration with F5
When Crawford & Company needed to migrate one of its data centers and workloads to the cloud, the business turned to F5 for help successfully migrating critical applications. Since then, the company’s claims management business has migrated most of its data centers to a secure, decentralized multicloud environment.
Business Challenge
If you’ve ever made an insurance claim, you know that speed of service is essential alongside expertise and empathy. Any delays can trigger anxiety and uncertainty.
That’s where Crawford & Company (Crawford) comes in. Based in Atlanta, Georgia, it is one of the world’s largest independent providers of claims management to the risk management and insurance industry. Its loss adjusting, third party administration, managed repair, catastrophe response, and medical management services each help expedite the claims process.
With integrity and honesty as its main principles, Crawford also has a well-earned reputation for innovation and expertise that delivers better customer experiences and operational efficiency. Its innovations include state of the art data analytics and automation tools for claims processing as well as drone technology to assess damage and even investigate potential fraud.
Until recently the business ran its IT systems and applications through a network of global on-premises data centers. Matt Nears, Deputy Chief Information Security Officer at Crawford, says, “While the set-up was reliable, our strategy was to move to the cloud to reduce maintenance costs and take advantage of innovative services, automation software, and machine learning tools.”
But this move presented an entirely new set of challenges. How do you guarantee protection and security for applications that no longer reside in a private data center but instead use cloud native services via APIs from multiple cloud providers?
Solutions
Nears approached the team at F5, which was already a key security provider to the business through solutions that included F5 BIG-IP appliances. The F5 team recommended F5 Distributed Cloud Web Application and API Protection (WAAP), a bundle of cloud-native, SaaS-based solutions that can support applications anywhere, including in the cloud. The Distributed Cloud Services offerings stood out for their seamless integration with Crawford’s existing security infrastructure, playing a crucial role in securing client portals, claimant upload systems, and management information (MI) facilities, enhancing data protection and accessibility.
Nears was especially impressed by Distributed Cloud API Security, which protects the business against threat actors attempting to exploit APIs to facilitate a breach or services outage. “With Distributed Cloud API Security, we can discover and map APIs, block unwanted connections, and enforce proper API behavior,” he says.
In addition, Crawford’s approach reduces dependency on skill sets specific to AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud. “F5 Distributed Cloud Services offered the best of both worlds,” Nears says. “We migrated our first data center in Canada in a matter of weeks while putting in place the foundation for full migration to a multicloud environment.
The wisdom of Nears’s decision quickly became apparent. Impressed by the speed of the Canadian migration, the business tasked his team with the global migration of Crawford’s on-premises operations to the cloud. This was a different order of difficulty, involving 11 global data centers in the Americas, Europe, and Asia and the participation of all three major public cloud platforms.
“Any IT and security leader will tell you that confidence is everything,” says Nears. “Having seen Distributed Cloud Services in action, we were able to act, safe in the knowledge that we had the backing of a tried and tested solution for application security and delivery.”
Results
Stripping complexity and cost out of multicloud security
As a global cloud business, Crawford must comply with the requirements of many different regulatory agencies, store different types of data, and work with increasingly distributed application architectures. Distributed Cloud Services greatly simplifies management and protection of these decentralized environments with its unified policy engine and management console. This streamlining is enabled in part by connections forged by Distributed Cloud App Connect.
“F5 Distributed Cloud Services removes the complexity of managing multiple environments with a stroke,” says Nears. “It’s also incredibly fast. With F5 Distributed Cloud Services we can apply security policies and protect distributed applications in as little as five minutes. Previously the best-case scenario was three months.”
Team building without stress
Distributed Cloud Services also makes it simpler for Nears to recruit and manage members of his security team. Instead of hiring specialists for each of the three main cloud platforms, he can now draw from a wider pool of professionals and quickly equip them with the skills to operate Distributed Cloud WAAP.
“At a time when the cost of hiring is greater than ever, F5 enables us to bring people on board who can work together without competing priorities,” says Nears. “People are under less pressure and have time to focus on activities that add value to the business rather than just reacting to events.”
Technology and people that make a difference
Crawford’s unwavering commitment to application security was evident in the collaborative partnership forged with F5. The company’s security team, with help from F5 technical experts, successfully implemented robust security measures. This strategic alliance resulted in a fortified application infrastructure capable of withstanding modern cyberthreats.
Nears calls out the commitment of the F5 engineers who provided round-the-clock support, especially during the first data center migration. “There was enormous willingness from the F5 team to jump in at any time, especially during proof of value exercises,” he says.
For the global project, the F5 team met with Nears twice a week to ensure risk-free deployment of Distributed Cloud Services across all of Crawford’s global cloud locations. “Crawford is a professional services business with values rooted in consistency, innovation, and integrity,” says Nears. “It’s clear that F5 shares these values to the letter. They very quickly became an extension of our team.”
- Simplify app delivery in multicloud environments
- Secure applications fast across multicloud networks
- Improve employee hiring and productivity
- Migrate to the cloud in two weeks
- Secure business-critical apps in new cloud environment
- Stabilize security team and reduce recruitment costs