Driving security and productivity in financial technology
Konfio
Mexico City, Mexico
Keeping up with the fast-paced, rigorous needs of a modern-day team is a worthy task for any IT team to undertake. With employees now in dispersed work environments, leveraging a variety of devices in a multitude of ways, challenges can arise for IT teams looking to provide a consistent, user-friendly and productive experience to users.
Throughout all of those challenges, one aspect that remains a consistent top priority is security. Company and customer data are running through each system, app, platform, software and hardware at any given moment — and it all needs to be protected.
No one knows that better than Konfio, a company committed to creating new and better finance experiences through digital banking and software solutions. And as you would imagine, security for a finance company is no small task.
Meeting client and security demands in financial technology
Konfio’s IT department understands the level of security any business within the financial industry needs to maintain and just how flexible, diligent and reactive Konfio must be to stay on top of ever-changing guidelines.
“There are policies and business expectations from our business partners,” said Daniel Sosa Noguez, Konfio’s IT Lead. “These change regularly, and we have to make sure our systems and devices are meeting those standards.”
These new policies can come out weekly or monthly and Konfio’s security team has to be ready to adapt and enforce on each employee’s device. This means that Konfio’s IT team must constantly verify that each employee’s device is updated with the new terms and security requirements to ensure compliance is met and data remains protected.
When Konfio began, they were a startup. A small team, needing to cover a lot of ground. For their clients, Konfio meticulously built a system that created a platform for them to grow, feel supported, and have their needs addressed efficiently and effectively. This resulted in expansive growth of their own as many more clients are seeing the Konfio value. With growth comes new challenges: how do we onboard all of these new employees
Offering Mac as part of an employee-choice program
Back in 2019, and due to Konfio’s fast growing pace — needing to onboard 30 new employees every month — there was an increased number of devices that needed to be maintained. Not only was it time consuming to have devices set up and ready for a new employee’s first day, the IT tickets began to stack up. Sosa estimates that at least 60% of IT’s time was being consumed with basic IT tickets. Password problems, troubleshooting, need for new software downloads, and more. That doesn’t take into account the time spent keeping up with new security needs.
Sosa admits that the process was tolerable, but there were long days and aspects that were very manual. These processes, due to its manual nature, were not scalable, hence, they needed to be addressed because it couldn’t sustain as Konfio grew.
Two initial changes were made: MacBook was offered as a hardware choice for employees and IT turned to scripting and open-source tools to help with some of their needs.
Right away, being able to offer Mac to their team made a huge impact. Engineers wanted to use Mac for their developers with Linux. Management was in love with using the same Mac devices at work that they were comfortable with using in their personal lives, and because it was an employee-choice program, the few Windows loyalists were able to use the devices they wanted.
Maximizing Mac and choice programs with Jamf
By making these two changes, a few problems were fixed. Users were reporting fewer tickets, although still their fair share, and IT was implementing “workarounds” to fill gaps in management tools. But the system wasn’t perfect, there were still a lot of manual operations needed, and again it was a feeling of “good enough, not perfect.”
In 2020, the world was hit with a global pandemic. Almost overnight, this heightened the need for remote control. With workers at home there was no option for manual device work. IT tickets needed to be solved, systems needed to be updated, security policies enforced, new employees onboarded — now in an entirely remote environment. To make matters more difficult, this global pandemic has threatened many businesses across the world, meaning Konfio’s customers needed them now more than ever.
Konfio’s customers’ lives didn’t stop when people were sent home. Their needs couldn’t be put on hold while Konfio figured out how to onboard their employees and keep customer data safe without a central office space. No, Konfio needed to act fast, act smart, and find a complete solution that would allow IT to work with each and every device without physically touching them. With Jamf in place, Konfio simply needed to alter how they were leveraging their MDM to solve their pressing problems.
Jamf specializes in remote device management and zero-touch device onboarding and was brought in a year before the pandemic to deliver a complete management solution so employees could be productive anywhere and clients continued to be top priority. Immediately, Konfio realized exactly how they needed to alter their usage of a platform that specialized in Apple Enterprise Management.
At this point, roughly 90% of Konfio’s devices are Apple, which means Jamf-enabled, workstations have transformed the onboarding experience and streamlined the process for setting up devices. Every week, Konfio is able to send hardware to their employees and all they need to do is unbox, power on and they are instantly presented with all the resources they need to be productive.
“Being able to offer a Mac on day one is a huge deal to new employees, which is the foundation for our relationship, and that’s a positive start,” said Javier Martinez, Konfio’s IT Engineer. “On the backend, it is helping us respond fast. To have the support on the backend and be able to offer support on the hardware and software side of things is helping everyone win. It’s better, it’s easier, it’s faster.”
Konfio’s usage of Jamf doesn’t stop after setting the device up. Before Konfio’s IT team were spending, on average, above a week per month on IT tickets and support! Once Konfio got up and running with Jamf, they noticed that, through Jamf’s Self Service — an on-demand app catalog populated by IT — employees were taking care of problems on their own. They could search the catalog of approved applications and tools and be completely empowered to download on demand, freeing up the IT team to focus on business-driving initiatives.
Before Jamf, more than half of our time was solving basic tickets. Now we are focused on the cloud, we aren’t doing ‘generic things’ and focusing on more vital tasks. Now, we are spending around 10% of our time on support. With these changes, most employees are taking care of things themselves, therefore, they are self-reliant.
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