Success Story

DBHawk allows secure, centralized management of multiple database platforms and seamless integration with SAML, Okta, LDAP, and other single sign-on systems. It supports AES-256 encryption, SSL and other security protocols, and is capable of auditing and role-based access control.

Because of its robust data security features, DBHawk is ideal for use in the insurance industry, among other financial services. This case study showcases the strengths of the web-based software in secure access to production databases.

About the Client

French company Digital Insure provides innovative digital and technology solutions for the credit and personal insurance industry. Digital Insure started out in 2013 as BPSIs (Brokerage Programs & Solutions for Insurance Services), with the aim to improve access to loan insurance. It quickly transitioned to becoming a leading player in the digital insurance market, coming out with its Multinet platform for the management of third-party borrower insurance contracts in 2016 and creating Digital Insure Distribution a year later. Now on its 6th year of operation, Digital Insure has expanded to a team of more than 60 people spread across its offices in Paris and Caen.

The Challenge

Digital Insure’s support team comprises highly-skilled professionals, dedicated to resolving any issues clients may encounter as they use its insurance solutions.

One of the challenges to better support was that, when clients raise issues, access to production databases may sometimes be required. In this aspect of their work, the support team’s performance was hampered by the lack of a tool that would track and log access to production databases and at the same time provide robust database analysis and administration features. This led to delays in resolving production issues and hampering, if not totally preventing, the team from achieving its 99.9% SLA commitment to its clients.

Digital Insure tried out several other tools that it hoped would have the right balance of robust features while allowing tracking of connections and queries per user but most were found wanting.

The Solution

CIO Richard Thibault, one of Digital Insure’s three founding partners, decided to let his team try out DBHawk, which a friend had recommended. After setting up a free trial account for the cloud-based SaaS DBHawk, which came with sample databases that his team can play around with, he liked what he saw, and finally decided to acquire licenses for the Digital Insure support team. He reached out to Datasparc, the creator of DBHawk, to ensure that his team would get the full support it needed as it set out to try DBHawk in production.

Manish Shah, Founder and CEO of Datasparc, heard about Digital Insure’s requirements and readily assured the former of his full support for the endeavor, instructing the Datasparc team to provide Digital Insure with everything it needed to ensure GDPR Data Protection and the project’s success.

Results

With DBHawk, Digital Insure was able to utilize a single. easy-to-administer and roll out, web-based tool that supported the Oracle and MySQL databases that were deployed in clients’ production environments. The web-based interface meant everything was managed centrally, allowing administrators to know which team members were working on specific instances and queries.

Since DBHawk supports a plethora of other database platforms, ranging from Amazon Redshift to Cassandra to SAP Hana and SQL Server, Digital Insure may find it easy to transition its platform to these other databases, if the need arises.

DBHawk seamlessly integrated with Digital Insure’s LDAP infrastructure, allowing the support team to connect to production databases without knowing the database user and password, preserving data security. Moreover, the tool’s support for two-factor authentication meant that database security was assured.

Since connections and queries from users were easily tracked, DBHawk made it easy for Digital Insure’s support team to fix issues in the production databases of its clients. Moreover, the support team found it easy to set up Read access to databases to non-technical people. Productivity among support team members increased as a result.

With DBHawk’s powerful SQL editor, the support team also did not need another tool to create and save queries. Moreover, the tool helped ease sharing of queries with other team members as well as customers, allowing troubleshooting to be fast-tracked. This meant that SLAs with customers were met with relative ease.

Digital Insure also found the system to be fast and reliable, so much so that, when asked what he dislike in the system, Digital Insure CIO Richard Thibault, whose brainchild it was to use DBHawk for the support team, remarked: “Nothing! It’s just perfect for our requirements.”