“Virtru's simplicity was honestly amazing. The little button in Outlook for encrypting an email… In terms of testing it, sending myself emails and seeing how the functionality is, I was just blown away. It was a really smooth experience.”
Jason Frank
IT Helpdesk Admin
Payroll People is a payroll and tax service provider based in Fresno, California. The company manages sensitive financial data for clients across the United States, making secure communication a critical component of their daily operations. Their team needed a simple yet versatile solution that would protect confidential data in a hybrid Microsoft Exchange environment without creating friction for staff or clients.
With Virtru, Payroll People:
Automates data security across its Hybrid Microsoft Exchange environment: It now covers all outbound emails, whether sent via on-prem servers or via cloud, with the Virtru Gateway for Outlook.
Improves the customer experience: When Cisco IronPort’s recipient experience created friction for customers, Payroll People found Virtru to be much easier to use and support.
Securely handles large files: With Virtru Secure Share as a complement to email encryption, Payroll People makes it easy for customers to securely send files containing PII
Payroll People uses Cisco IronPort’s suite of security tools, which includes an email encryption function. However, the company found that there were two primary issues with IronPort’s email encryption: It was only capturing a portion of the company’s outbound emails (on-prem, but not cloud), and the interface was frustrating for clients to interact with.
They needed a simpler, more user-friendly solution that would protect the full scope of email flowing through its hybrid Microsoft environment, without adding friction to daily workflows.
The search for a replacement solution involved evaluating several vendors, including FileCloud and Proofpoint. However, according to Jason Frank, IT Helpdesk Admin for Payroll People, "Once we met Virtru, we pretty much bought in." The simplicity and user-friendly approach of Virtru's solution stood out immediately during the evaluation process.
“Virtru's simplicity was honestly amazing,” said Frank. “The little button in Outlook for encrypting an email… In terms of testing it, sending myself emails and seeing how the functionality is, I was just blown away. It was a really smooth experience.”
“With IronPort, [clients] had to log into their Cisco portal to get the email, and it was never really intuitive,” said James McHenry, Network Administrator for Payroll People. “It was pretty hard to use. We would also get lost emails constantly, so we had to check to see if they got delivered correctly.”
Now, with Virtru for Outlook and the Virtru Gateway running in the background, the customer experience around encrypted email is much smoother. “Our clients are no longer getting frustrated and irritated with our customer service because they can't see a secured email," McHenry explained.
Payroll People implemented three Virtru solutions: the Virtru Gateway for Outlook (server-side encryption), Virtru for Outlook (for client-side encryption), and Virtru Secure Share. Whereas the team had initially anticipated challenges with the transition, the deployment proved remarkably straightforward.
"We thought there would be a big learning curve, and we thought we would get a lot of pushback from switching to Virtru, but everyone seems to like it," said McHenry. "The deployments were actually really easy." This smooth rollout minimized disruption to their business operations and allowed for quick adoption across the organization. Because Payroll People still uses IronPort for other security purposes, the Virtru Solutions Engineering team worked to ensure that Virtru and Cisco worked together successfully, as intended.
From an IT perspective, the solution has been virtually maintenance-free. "I work the help desk,” said Frank. “A quiet rollout is the best rollout. I literally didn't even have an idea for probably a day or two that we had already integrated it. And I can't tell you how awesome that is.”
“One thing I could say about Virtru is it's been pretty smooth,” he added. “I really don't get a whole lot of tickets for anything related to it.” This reliability allows the IT team to focus on other priorities instead of troubleshooting security software issues.
Payroll People uses email for many customer communications, but sometimes, customers need to submit files too large for email. Virtru Secure Share protects tax, finance, and payroll files up to 15 GB.
“We needed a way to send files that were bigger than email size,” said McHenry. “And, because it uses the same interface as the email encryption that Virtru has, it was actually really easy to get people to migrate to it, because they log in the same exact way to see the file.”
“Sometimes, people want to send us screenshots of their work schedules,” McHenry added. “They show us how many hours they've worked. We also get tax information from them, because we also do taxes for a lot of companies, and we needed a way to securely send large files back and forth.”
Virtru has transformed how Payroll People handles secure communications, streamlining internal workflows and client relationships. The intuitive interface has eliminated the barriers that previously existed between the company and its clients when sharing sensitive information. Virtru also supports the organization’s SOC-2 compliance.
When asked what he would tell colleagues exploring similar solutions, McHenry responded with a strong endorsement: "I would say it's great. It's easy. Everyone that uses it thinks it's extremely easy to log in and get the secure files. And I would highly recommend it."
/celtic-consulting-resource-card.webp)
/resource%20-%20Secure%20Share%20Video/Virtru%20Secure%20Share%20Security%20Settings-01.webp)
