December 15, 2011

Document Security: Cloud Collaboration and Mobility

By Cloud Syndicate

Document Security

It is no secret that the cloud, combined with today’s mobile technologies, has had a huge impact on how the world does business. The ability to send documents, update presentations and check email from tablets and other mobile devices from anywhere, at any time, offers many cost and time saving benefits. And with Gartner’s recent prediction that more than 100 million media tablets will ship worldwide in 2012, updating and sharing documents on the go will become even more common. As this trend continues to grow, it is important to consider the risks and take the proper steps to protect your company’s most sensitive information.

What are the risks?

There are a few aspects of document sharing via mobile devices that should be considered when determining a company’s level of vulnerability. Companies should ask the following:

1. What happens if an important document is sent to the wrong person by mistake? Over 80 percent of Data leaks are accidental. For Instance, the wrong recipient can be copied on a sensitive email or an employee could attach the wrong document to an email by mistake.

2. What security measures are in place once a document has left the organization? There are a number of solutions for securing information that is shared internally, but those security measures no longer apply once the document has left the organization. Also, consider what might happen if a hacker or disgruntled employee gains access to the company’s IT infrastructure.

3. What happens if an executive’s laptop or mobile device is lost or stolen? If sensitive information is accessible from the device, it can wind up being leaked to the media or shared with competitors, which can be costly and embarrassing.

Protection that extends beyond the mobile device

If your company issues mobile devices to its employees, you most likely use a mobile device management (MDM) solution, but most MDM solutions do not provide protection for documents that live on tablets and mobile devices. MDM solutions can remotely wipe a device clean, but only if the device is managed by the enterprise. If an employee uses a personal device for business, an MDM solution is completely ineffective. To truly protect a company’s most sensitive information, employ a solution that allows you to have complete control over the lifecycle of a document.

Most data that is shared via tablets and smartphones is done so due to its high priority. Often, this data is mission-critical and would cause great concern if it were to be shared with an outside party. While you can’t prevent an employee’s mobile device from being lost or stolen, you can implement a solution that gives you the ability to destroy the documents contained on the device in the event that the mobile device is compromised. Your document security solution should also allow you to track the lifecycle of a document so you are always aware of who has read, printed or forwarded the information. That way you can track any data breach or leak attempts back to the source and destroy the document at a moment’s notice if needed.

A company’s intellectual property is its most precious resource and businesses need to keep its safety top of mind. The most secure solutions are the ones that will keep up with the ever growing advances in cloud technology, especially when dealing with a mobile workforce.

By Adi Ruppin, Vice President of Business Development at WatchDox

Cloud Syndicate

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