Many organizations need to keep their files secure, while still encouraging collaboration among different teams. With the proper tools, your business can maintain security of files while still encouraging collaboration.
Employee Security in the Cloud
Many data breaches are caused by fraudulent employees, including recent data breaches resulting in tax frauds in multiple colleges. With any good Unified Communications (UC) systems, data is limited to the employees who have a need to know, limiting the possibility of fraud. With paper files and other communications systems, the possibility of interception abounds. Through secure documents, online storage and communication devices, not only are your documents limited to specific users, much of the communication about them is done securely as well.
Increase Collaboration
A good UC system includes a secure computer based communication system, like Skype. These communication systems use authentication on both sides of the communication to prevent an unintended recipient from decoding the information. With secure files and communication, your teams can work together, no matter their location.
Collaboration gives your teams the ability to interact positively, bridge multiple locations and work more efficiently together. Positive and efficient team work requires that each team member have the tools to know what is going on and be a part of the team. Whether on the playground as children, or in the workplace meeting as adults, people do not enjoy feeling left out and confused. The right UC system securely increases collaboration so that each team member can meaningfully engage with the rest of the team across any distance.
With the right UC system, collaboration is increased across the supply chain and distribution chain as well. Your business engages customers and vendors and people in-between every day. File sharing gives your employees the ability to securely and accurately share pertinent files with customers and suppliers, reducing communication errors and increasing efficiency.
Contracts, work orders, and receipts can all be shared between contacts without the document leaving your business’s control. This is very important for documents which require editing: with cloud-based sharing platforms, the document will always be up-to-date, and can track changes per user so that everyone knows who did what. Additionally, receipts and invoices can be sent as read-only files so that the customer has access for their records but you retain control.
Security Precautions
In order to efficiently secure your UC system, you can do several things for internal and external security and to protect your information from being obtained through stolen laptops, smartphones or other hardware devices.
- Use a communication system supported by the right communication provider. For example, Facebook and Twitter are known for sharing information, not protecting it. On the other hand, Google, Microsoft and Apple all have vested interest in creating communication systems for businesses which are as secure as possible.
- Ensure that all smartphones, tablets or PCs used by employees have a remote factory reset option. This gives your team the ability to wipe clean a device which has passwords, user identification and other information on its hard-drive.
- All devices used for company accounts must have password protection. With more and more people using master passwords and saved passwords in browsers, a basic protection is training and setting up accountability systems so that all employees have password protected logins for any device used for business communication.
- Employees log-off of devices when not in use. Many businesses require employees to use business phones and computers for the very reason that password protection and idle log-off can be done automatically for every computer, reducing the amount of time to be spent on managing employees’ computer habits.
Secure files and collaboration are completely possible in our current tech-driven society, to discover how a modern UC system can work for your business, please contact us.