Member Article

Intapp Announces Walls 7.0 to Ensure Client Compliance and Alleviate Risk

Intapp, the leading provider of business applications for professional services firms, today announced the availability of Intapp Walls 7.0, the latest release of its ethical walls and confidentiality management solution. Key additions include market-leading performance enhancements to support closed security models, new extensions for data management applications, real-time activity tracking and user experience enhancements.

Intapp Walls is the most trusted ethical walls solution on the market and has the largest customer base. Intapp Walls enables law firms and other professional services organizations to secure all applications that host sensitive data. This application-agnostic approach gives firms the freedom to make application system changes as required—whether due to mergers, version upgrades or migrations to cloud-based solutions—with uninterrupted risk solution coverage.

Intapp Walls—part of Intapp’s technology foundation of common core service capabilities—is also available as part of the company’s Unified Business Acceptance offering, which enables firms to strategically evaluate new business, quickly and securely on-board new matters and engagements, and manage both risk and compliance across the entire client lifecycle.

“When we evaluated tools for managing client confidentiality, we did not view our Intapp Walls investment as an added cost for protecting critical information. Instead, we viewed it as a cost savings opportunity to automate what had otherwise been a time-consuming, manual process that was difficult to manage and effectively audit,” said Anton Schneider, Business Analyst at Garvey Schubert Barer. “Beyond the efficiencies gained through the systematic application of our security protocols, the peace of mind we enjoy knowing that Walls is actively protecting multiple systems hosting sensitive client data – such as Intapp Time, our document management system and our practice management system - is invaluable.”

New features of Intapp Walls 7.0 include:

Unrivalled data management application extensions New cloud extension secures iManage Cloud and updated extensions secure the latest versions of NetDocuments, Carpe Diem Next Generation, OpenText eDOCS DM, iManage Govern, and more.

Insider threat detection with real-time activity and usage tracking Automated monitoring tracks user access and content download activity in real time, enabling firms to rapidly detect and respond to anomalous behaviour that could indicate insider threats. Tracking also provides granular logging to pull specified “look-back” periods to assist with investigations.

Enhanced UX Walls 7.0 delivers a more seamless user experience, whether used as a standalone solution or as part of Unified Business Acceptance. The interface keeps complexity behind the scenes to increase user productivity.

Unmatched Performance and Scale This release includes dramatic performance improvements brought about predominantly by a redesign of our Master Extension Service architecture, which forms the basis of our native and generic security extensions. This re-architecting achieves up to a tenfold speed and efficiency improvement in some of our core extensions. Separately, Activity Tracker performance and configuration enhancements brought about better fault tolerance, resulting in much less troubleshooting required of the firms’ IT departments.

The State of the Industry The release of Walls 7.0 comes at a time of increased emphasis on security, client confidentiality and compliance as firms struggle with the growing complexity of data and the increasing number of insider threats. According to PwC’s 2018 Global State of Information Security Survey, the most prevalent cybersecurity threats are not directed toward firms’ perimeter defences; rather, they are caused by intentional or unintentional actions by individuals within the firm. A full 95 percent of assessments completed as part of the LogicForce Law Firm Cyber Security Scorecard show firms are not compliant with their own data governance and cybersecurity policies, and 100 percent of those firms are not compliant with client policy standards. With the growing volume and complexity of data, and data moving across various systems, the risk of exposure to unintended parties grows larger by the day. Even when a portion of high-risk client data resides in permission-controlled document management systems, the same data is often exposed in other systems to support business needs. Examples include data captured during client intake, engagement letters stored in a CRM system, document contents displayed in search-result snippets, information pulled into an RFP system during proposal creation, or activities referenced in timekeeping narratives.

The potential risk of exposing data to unintended parties is huge—think HIPAA-protected health information from an insurance client, or details from a due diligence project during a merger that exposes material non-public information.

“Intapp Walls 7.0 helps our customers stay ahead of the continuously changing technology landscape, data protection laws and client security guidelines,” said Jose Lazares, Intapp’s vice president of product strategy and product management. “Data vulnerability is a major issue for professional services firms across the legal, consulting, accounting and financial service industries. The financial impact of a data breach can be massive, not to mention the intangible costs of reputation damage, productivity loss and impact on employee morale.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Anna Brown .