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    Hub International Case Study

    Customer

    Hub International is a leading global insurance broker headquartered in Chicago. The company operates across North America with more than 25,000 users and a large number of external collaborators in its Microsoft 365 environment.

    Challenge

    Hub International had limited visibility into sharing and thousands of orphaned users and inactive sites. These issues created additional risk as the company prepared for the AI rollout.

    Solution

    Syskit Point gave Hub International visibility and control over sharing, external access, and user activity across the entire tenant.  Automated cleanup helped their IT team address issues that would have been impossible to do manually at scale.

    Results

    Hub International removed nearly 30,000 orphaned users, eliminated approx. 200 expired sharing links, cleaned up inactive sites, and established ongoing control over permissions and external access across its Microsoft 365 environment. The resulting governance foundation gave the business greater confidence in its AI adoption plans.

    Customer
    Challenge
    Solution
    Results

    Customer

    Hub International is a leading full-service global insurance broker, headquartered in Chicago, Illinois. The company provides property and casualty, life and health, employee benefits, investment, and risk management products and services from offices across North America.  

    The company acquires around 70 companies each year. With more than 25,000 users and a high volume of external collaborators, Hub International's Microsoft 365 environment is large, complex, and constantly growing. 

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    " We now have a much clearer and more manageable approach to Microsoft 365 governance.”

    Challenges

    No visibility across Microsoft 365


    Managing a Microsoft 365 environment at Hub International's scale means governance issues build up quickly. The team previously relied on running manual PowerShell scripts for many governance tasks, making the process time-consuming, reactive, and difficult to scale.

    While Microsoft's SharePoint Advanced Management (SAM) supported specific governance scenarios, it didn't provide the centralized visibility and control needed to manage the entire Microsoft 365 environment. Without that overview, a large and active tenant can accumulate clutter faster than any IT team could address manually.


    No control over sharing 


    Hub International had accumulated a significant amount of risky sharing across its tenants. Anonymous sharing links, broad "Everyone except external users" access permissions, and ad hoc external user access had built up over time. Determining who had access to what and whether that access was still relevant was difficult without a centralized view.

    Without a centralized view, it was difficult to determine who had access to what and whether that access was still needed. This made it harder for the team to identify unnecessary exposure and take action before it became a larger risk.

    „We did not have a very good architectural overview of our SharePoint environment that we needed for better control. Additionally, in case management asked questions about the tenant, we had no quick answers.“


    Orphaned users and inactive sites creating complexity


    When users leave an organization, and their accounts are deleted, their permissions in SharePoint don't automatically disappear. Hub International had a large number of orphaned user permissions; leftover access tied to deleted accounts, which created clutter. 

    At the same time, inactive and unmanaged sites continued to exist in the tenant with no owner accountable for the content. This made it difficult to decide what should be retained, reassigned, or removed.


    AI rollout at risk without a clean environment


    Hub International adopted Claude across the business. But rolling out AI in an environment with uncontrolled sharing, permissions, and inactive sites creates a significant risk: AI can surface content that users have access to, even if that access was never intentional. Before AI could be rolled out safely, Hub International needed to clean up its Microsoft 365 environment and establish stronger governance over content and permissions. 

    Solution

    Hub International implemented Syskit Point to bring visibility, control, and automated governance to its Microsoft 365 environment. Syskit Point became part of the IT team's daily operations, saving time and giving them control over sharing, external access, orphaned users, and inactive sites across a tenant of 26,000 users.

     

    Visibility into sharing and external access

    Syskit Point gave Hub International a centralized view of sharing across its tenants for the first time. The team could see anonymous links, expired sharing links, broad "Everyone except external users" permissions, and ad-hoc external users, all in one place. Instead of discovering risky sharing by accident, admins can now proactively review whether access is still needed and remove it at scale before it becomes a problem.

     

    „We had expired sharing links that have been sitting there for 7 years, creating a bunch of clutter. Syskit Point has really given us a lot of useful insights into the environment and actions.“

     

    Automated removal of expired sharing links and orphaned users

    Rather than relying on manual reviews, Hub International used Syskit Point to automate the removal of expired sharing links. This helped keep the environment clean and secure on an ongoing basis without requiring IT intervention for every cleanup cycle.

    Syskit Point also automatically identified and removed orphaned user permissions, left behind when accounts are deleted. This eliminated the risk of permissions being unexpectedly inherited if the same username was created again and removed a class of hidden access that had been building up across the tenant.

     

    „ Automated removal of expired sharing links and orphaned users has been a lifesaver. We look at it as the low-hanging fruit. We start with the easiest, and then we're gonna go into the more complex - we can let Syskit Point do it all by itself."

     

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    Orphaned and inactive workspace reporting and management

    The orphaned workspaces report gave Hub International visibility into unmanaged sites ( workspaces with no active owner or no recent activity). The team could identify inactive workspaces for cleanup, reducing sprawl and ensuring that AI would only be able to surface relevant, actively managed content.

     

    Governance as the enabler of AI adoption

    Syskit Point gave Hub International a stronger foundation for a safe AI rollout. By cleaning up risky sharing, setting right permissions, and removing inactive sites before deployment, the team made sure AI tools could only surface content users were genuinely meant to access. Instead of slowing down AI adoption, governance became its enabler, giving the business confidence to roll out AI with confidence that the environment behind it was clean and under control.

    Hub International is now exploring additional Syskit Point capabilities to take governance further:

    • Audit logs and user activity insights to investigate access patterns and compliance questions

    • Provisioning to ensure all new sites are created through controlled processes only

    • License optimization to better understand license utilization across their rapidly growing tenant

       

    These next steps represent the team's evolution from reactive cleanup toward a fully governed Microsoft 365 environment.

    Results

    The impact of deploying Syskit Point at Hub International can be seen in both the scale of what was cleaned up and in the level of control the IT team now has over a Microsoft 365 environment that was previously difficult to manage at this size.


    30,000 orphaned permissions removed

    Syskit Point identified and automataically removed nearly 30,000 orphaned user permissions from the tenant. This eliminated leftover access tied to deleted accounts and significantly reduced the risk of unintended permission inheritance.

     

    200 expired sharing links removed

    Two hundred expired sharing links were automatically eliminated, reducing unnecessary external access and tightening control over what was being shared and with whom.


    Inactive sites cleaned up

    Hub International identified and deleted inactive workspaces with Syskit Point, reducing sprawl across the tenant and ensuring the environment contains only actively owned and managed content.


    Risky access removed and permissions under control

    Syskit Point helped Hub International identify and address risky access, including anonymous links and broad permission assignments. Hub International now has ongoing visibility and control over permissions across the tenant.


    A clean environment for AI adoption

    By cleaning up orphaned users, inactive sites, and risky sharing before rollout, Hub International built the governance layer needed to deploy AI safely - ensuring the AI surfaces only accurate, appropriately permissioned content.


    Time savings and faster reporting to management

    When management requests information about the environment, the team no longer needs to spend hours building PowerShell scripts or searching for answers. 

    Syskit Point provides the IT team with instant visibility, allowing them to respond immediately with accurate insights and turning what used to be a multi-hour task into a matter of minutes.

    " We now have a much clearer and more manageable approach to Microsoft 365 governance.”

     

     

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