Insurance United Kingdom

Successful data decryption in a complex cloud migration process – a task previously deemed unfeasible

Executive summary

Challenge: A large volume of sensitive encrypted data had to be migrated to the cloud. It turned out it was impossible to decrypt it on the data platform the client was using and official providers could not help.

Approach: Future Processing’s specialists used a cloud-based tool successfully and worked on the data decryption case using reverse engineering.

Result: All the data was successfully decrypted and could be moved to the cloud. Our experts, who succeeded in decrypting the data, were nominated for the client’s annual internal awards.

Table of contents

About the client

Hiscox is a global specialist insurer, headquartered in Bermuda and listed on the London Stock Exchange (LSE:HSX). Their ambition is to be a respected specialist insurer with a diverse portfolio by product and geography. They believe that building balance between catastrophe-exposed business and less volatile local specialty business gives the opportunities for profitable growth throughout the insurance cycle.

The Hiscox Group employs over 3,000 people in 14 countries, and has customers worldwide. Through the retail businesses in the USA, UK, Europe and Asia, they offer a range of specialist insurance products in commercial and personal lines. Internationally-traded, bigger-ticket business and reinsurance is underwritten through Hiscox London Market and Hiscox Re & ILS.

Successful data decryption in a complex cloud migration process

The client was migrating sensitive data to the cloud. It was encrypted with standard tools used in the client’s database (MS SQL Server) and it turned out it was impossible to decrypt it on the cloud data platform they were using (Snowflake).

Another challenge was about the data encrypted with algorithms and libraries that the client had built in-house – it was their custom-made encryption process. Official providers could not give our client any advice or guidance on how to decrypt their sensitive data.

Our data experts managed to decrypt the client’s data using a cloud-based tool (MS SQL Server hosted in the cloud). They also worked on the other data decryption case, using reverse engineering. They were able to successfully decrypt all the data, although originally it was deemed impossible.

The client could migrate their sensitive data to the cloud and take the next necessary step towards their full digital transformation. The solution led to the squad our experts work within being nominated for the client’s annual internal awards (“Living the Vision Awards”) in the Innovation category.

Technologies used in the projects