A recent report by 451 Research highlighted the market requirements for secure enterprise messaging and collaboration. Chief among these are data sharing, encryption, compliance, and administrative controls. As enterprises evaluate messaging and collaboration technologies, these market requirements should serve as a checklist for identifying best practices for agile, secure, compliant collaboration.

Data sharing

Protecting data privacy in the work-from-anywhere environment requires enterprises to carefully consider the data sharing practices of the solutions they use for communication and collaboration. The many channels – messaging, video, voice – and files exchanged on these platforms have profound implications for data security, making protecting data a critical item on the collaboration solutions evaluation checklist.

Risk to organizations
The use of unsecure collaboration tools presents a powder keg of risk for organizations. These risks include incidents of data theft, exposure of sensitive company information, negative brand perception, steep data recovery costs and compromised relationships with customers, partners, and vendors.

Best practice: NetSfere
Data security is a key differentiator for NetSfere. NetSfere’s strict no-data collection approach earned the platform the distinction of being highlighted in a recent 451 Research report (WhatsApp privacy backlash is a wake-up call for secure enterprise messaging and collaboration) as the leading secure enterprise messaging and collaboration platform.

Encryption

End-to-end encryption (E2EE) has become a business essential as companies increasingly support remote work at scale and continue to ramp up adoption of cloud-based applications. These two here-to-stay trends are transitioning E2EE from a nice-to-have feature to a business essential vital to securing enterprise communication and collaboration.

Risk to organizations
As adoption of cloud-based application grows, so does the amount of potentially vulnerable data managed in the cloud. Without E2EE, cloud-based applications can expose companies to cyber threats that can cause massive financial and reputational harm.

The here-to-stay remote working paradigm is also expanding attack surfaces and creating new opportunities for cyber criminals. Use of consumer-grade messaging apps that were not built to be secure at the enterprise level is opening the door for hackers to infiltrate enterprise networks and gain access to sensitive company information.

Best practice: NetSfere
NetSfere’s E2EE across every device allows employees to share information without jeopardizing the integrity of sensitive data. All NetSfere conversations are encrypted by default. Our industry-leading secure messaging platform combines enterprise-grade E2EE with advanced algorithms, protecting data and information as it is transmitted from device to device.

Compliance

Compliance laws and regulations continue to evolve. The growing mandate for enterprises to implement administrative, technical, and physical data security practices call for a strategic and measured approach to compliance.

Risk to organizations
Federal compliance regulations for file and data sharing are strict and the fines for non-compliance are steep. A study from Ponemon and Globalscape reports that it is 2.71 times more costly for an organization not to comply with mandates. The average cost of compliance is $5.47 million versus an average of $14.82 million for noncompliance.

Best practice: NetSfere
NetSfere provides all the necessary administrative, physical and technical safeguards, that enable enterprises to be completely compliant with the evolving regulatory landscape. NetSfere allows enterprises to meet the most demanding and evolving global compliance and privacy requirements of GDPR, HIPAA, FINRA, SOX, DFA, and more.

Administrative controls

No matter how secure an enterprise messaging system claims to be, a lack of thorough administrative controls exposes organizations to serious threats. Collaboration platforms that lack robust administrative control make it difficult to manage employee account activity. Administrative controls coupled with security and compliance (the pillars of advanced enterprise messaging), equip IT organizations to address an increasingly complex range of mobile messaging challenges and use scenarios.

Risk to organizations
An increasingly distributed workforce and widespread use of unauthorized messaging solutions highlights the need for greater control in enterprise communications. The ad hoc use of consumer-grade messaging apps that lack adequate control mechanisms leaves organizations exposed and vulnerable to internal and external threats.

Best practice: NetSfere
NetSfere provides IT administrators with a powerful centralized administrative control panel to manage all aspects of the communication platform. These robust administrative controls enable centralized account management, file sharing and policy compliance, remote wipe, real-time reporting, and other capabilities—giving IT departments the controls they need to manage the distribution of information across the enterprise.

Checking all these boxes, can help enterprises deliver the ultimate in collaboration to increase productivity without sacrificing security, compliance and control.

Contact NetSfere today to find out how your enterprise can check all the boxes for better, more secure communication and collaboration.