Case Studies

As a quasi-state agency, Maryland Auto Insurance does not receive funding from the state and rather, operates like any other insurance carrier. This provides more flexibility in making decisions to best serve its policyholders, including decisions about how to operate its technical environment. Having supported IT for Maryland Auto Insurance for the past twenty-two years, today Ailstock juggles several responsibilities within his seven-person team. He is focused on leveraging the agility of limited resources to the organization's advantage and finding new ways to be proactive in his approach to serving the organization and its policyholders. "We are responsive to things because we're a small team," he says. "It's important that we continue to stop issues before they occur, which is why we're constantly looking at the horizon of IT." IT as a utility service Upwards of 35,000 drivers in Maryland received policies from Maryland Auto Insurance last year. By assisting those who otherwise struggle to obtain insurance, Maryland Auto Insurance reduces the number of uninsured drivers on the road, providing more protection for all. From Ailstock's perspective, customer data security and access are central to allowing the organization to carry out its mission. "I see IT as a utility service within the organization," he says. "If I don't do my job, you can't do your job. All of the resources that every person in the organization needs are no longer paper-bound — it's all tech — so if I'm not vigilant and not constantly looking and evaluating what we have and how to improve it, then I'm not doing my job." Customer data, including driver's licenses and address information, is stored long-term for state-specified compliance purposes, as well as policy and claim data, which Ailstock says is "data which we live and die by." Managing data storage used to involve "a hodge-podge of backup solutions," says Ailstock, which created challenges for recovering data efficiently, as disparate systems depended on individual team members for management. "In any organization with dedicated IT, you'll have a person who is the expert in a specific technology, who knows how to implement it better than anyone. When we were using previous backup solutions, it was always best to go to the person who knew how the policies worked and how the jobs ran," Ailstock shares. Relying on individual team members for specific recovery tasks was inefficient and absorbing foundational IT resources. Shifting the perspective on data security Pivoting day to day between help desk operations, telecommunications, and IT infrastructure, Ailstock has data security at the top of his mind. "What I think about, even though the end user doesn't, is the comfort level I have with the ability to retain data," he says. Data security is a significant consideration for insurance IT, which depends on high volumes of stored data to maintain operational compliance. Cloud-based technology has changed how data is stored, and with it comes a shift in perspective for seasoned professionals like Ailstock, who have experienced the transition from traditional rack-and-stack bare metal servers to a dispersion of workloads between on-prem hardware, hyperconverged solutions, and in the cloud. "It used to be nice to have data safe behind my firewalls and in my data center, but that doesn't work anymore," he says. "Now I'm asking, 'How do I protect all of this, knowing that my end users need to communicate to multiple cloud tenants and multiple sites?' That's been the most significant change in the IT space recently — finding the right solution and then relinquishing some level of locality of it." I see IT as a utility service within the organization. If I don't do my job, you can't do your job." – Matt Ailstock, IT Systems Manager, Maryland Auto Insurance

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