Over two-thirds of companies expressed concerns over the employee use of third-party apps to send sensitive enterprise information to coworkers. So says a recent survey titled “2014 Enterprise Internal Messaging Trends,” conducted by Infinite Convergence (News - Alert) Solutions.
Arlington Heights, Ill.-based Infinite Convergence Solutions, Inc. (ICS) develops carrier and enterprise-grade messaging platforms. This includes messaging for legacy and cloud environments. ICS also offers consulting and support services for its customers that lack the skillset or need help setting up their messaging system.
The popularity of BYOD programs in large corporations and enterprises has led to several practices that put sensitive data at risk. Employees often download a document with sensitive information as an attachment using a third-party consumer-grade chat app like Skype (News - Alert), Google Chat or WhatsApp and send it to one or more co-workers. WhatsApp is so much of a security risk that a Google search on ‘WhatsApp hacked’ reveals several sites that either provide software that hacks WhatsApp chats or list instructions on how to do so.
In addition to sensitive data being transmitted by less secure messaging apps; another major concern is how much information is sitting out there on various devices after an employee leaves the company. Many companies have resorted to outright bans on various chat apps and the use of third-party software to forward company documents, but these policies by themselves do little to stop anyone from circumventing them.
The latest solution from ICS, NetSfere, addresses many of these problems with a different architecture. Documents containing sensitive data reside on cloud servers and never leave that environment. Since they cannot be downloaded as attachments and forwarded through third party messaging apps, they are not exposed to the risks that come from using such software.
All users must login to the cloud hosting the document and use NetSfere to collaborate on those documents. They can access the system anyway they want via a laptop, desktop, smartphone or tablet but because of this closed system, nothing can be downloaded into the wrong hands. It’s a relatively trivial matter to remove an employee’s access rights when they leave the company.
Many security issues have come with the adoption of BYOD policies to the point that its skeptics want to say, “See, I told you so,” but hanks to cloud technology, ICS has come up with a way to eliminate many of those risks. It should be a compelling solution for any company that needs to protect its intellectual property and sensitive information.
Edited by Alisen Downey