LifePort Scales Secure Collaboration Across the Aerospace Supply Chain with Virtru

For over three decades, LifePort has designed and manufactured aerospace solutions that protect lives—from air medical transport systems to ballistic protection and custom VIP aircraft interiors. Operating across U.S. Military, law enforcement, and commercial aviation, LifePort collaborates with a global network of customers and suppliers to deliver mission-critical products.

Those collaborations have high stakes: technical drawings, STEP model files, and proprietary designs must be protected against loss and misuse, especially when shared across government-controlled environments and export-sensitive workflows. LifePort's success depends on being able to share securely without friction—and on respecting every data point as mission-critical.

The Result

• Delegated, Not Gatekept Collaboration. Empowered internal users to share directly with external U.S. customers and suppliers across technical drawings, STEP models, and compliance documents.

• Compliance Built In. Met CMMC Level 2 self-certification, ITAR/export control, and GCC High environment requirements in a single platform. FedRAMP-compatible encryption and audit trails eliminated the need to evaluate multiple tools or compromise on security posture.

• Intuitive, Low-Friction Adoption. A manufacturing workforce with limited technical depth adopted Workspaces immediately. One administrator manages setup and operations independently; end users need no training. Setup is simple enough that employees self-serve.

The Compliance Catalyst: GCC High, ITAR, and CMMC

In early 2026, LifePort made a strategic move by transitioning to Microsoft's GCC High environment to meet government cloud requirements and strengthen its export-control posture. The move was necessary—ITAR regulations, CMMC Level 2 self-certification, and partnership with U.S. defense contractors all required it.

But GCC High is not conducive to modular file sharing. Native Microsoft sharing tools became restricted, and email attachments were no longer an option for sensitive data.

LifePort needed a way to share technical drawings and compliance-critical files with customers and suppliers—many of them outside the government cloud—without exposing regulated content or violating export rules.

Simplicity Over Complexity

When LifePort's IT team evaluated options, they found Virtru through the FedRAMP Marketplace. The decision criteria were clear: FedRAMP Moderate certification, FIPS 140-3 encryption, and above all, usability for team members.

Virtru checked every box. The team found a single platform that handled both secure-to-secure sharing (internal user to internal user) and secure-to-non-secure sharing (internal to external collaborators without credentials). Suppliers and customers could receive encrypted files and open them without creating accounts. The setup was fast, the interface was self-explanatory, and the compliance posture was uncompromising.

A competing platform (that rhymes with rocks) offered broader functionality—but at three to four times the cost and with management overhead LifePort couldn't justify.

Virtru nailed it from the administration standpoint.

Collaboration Evolved: From Email to Workspaces

LifePort's initial deployment of Virtru Secure Share solved the immediate problem: secure one-to-many file sharing via encrypted link. But as usage scaled, a new need surfaced.

Customers and suppliers didn't just need to receive files; they needed to collaborate by uploading drawings, providing feedback, or iterating on designs. Secure Share worked for sending, and LifePort wanted to expand to multi-party collaboration.

Enter Virtru Collaborate. LifePort deployed Collaborate in July 2026, and the difference was immediate.

Today, LifePort runs three to four active workspaces—roughly half with customers, half with suppliers—managing technical drawings (PDFs) and CAD models (STEP files) that would have been difficult or impossible to share through traditional channels. One administrator generates about 99% of the setup work, and end users collaborate without friction.

The result is a more distributed, more scalable collaboration model that respects LifePort's compliance requirements while empowering internal teams to do their jobs without bureaucracy.

Compliance, Control, and Confidence

For LifePort, the mission is clear: design, build, and deploy aerospace solutions that save lives. Every drawing, every CAD file, every specification that leaves the company carries that responsibility.

Virtru doesn't change that mission—it emboldens it. By providing encryption, audit trails, and access controls that align with CMMC and ITAR requirements without requiring IT heroics to manage, Virtru lets LifePort's teams focus on engineering rather than compliance overhead.

Jon Sasaki, LifePort's Contracts Manager and International Trade Compliance lead, summed it up:

"It's been a positive experience. Virtru has been a great way to stay compliant, the user interface is intuitive and easy to manage, and the support is good. The team consistently checks in to see how things are going."

As LifePort continues to grow and the aerospace industry demands tighter collaboration and stricter compliance, Collaborate and Secure Share are scaling with them.

The team is confident not just in the technology, but in the partnership—a trusted tool that respects the data and, by extension, respects the mission.