According to Finances online, the number-one attribute of a great workplace is that it promotes collaboration and team building. Given all the recent changes in the work environment, how can your organization build a collaborative workplace – while ensuring the security of your communications and data? Read on to discover some of the top secure collaboration strategies to embrace in the coming year.
Why Secure Collaboration is Essential in 2022
The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has reinforced the importance of working remotely. To collaborate effectively from multiple locations, your employees must have seamless real-time access to one another and to essential data and files stored on your corporate network. This remote collaboration must be secure, which is challenging when employees log in over less-secure home and public wireless networks using a combination of work and personal devices.
In addition to maintaining communication and data security, this remote collaboration must comply with a growing number of governmental and industry regulations regarding data privacy. Remote employees must have access to important customer data yet that data needs to remain private. If you can’t ensure the privacy of this data, your organization could be subject to costly fines, (Noncompliance with the California Consumer Privacy Act, as one example, can cost up to $7500 per violation, for example.)
5 Secure Collaboration Strategies for 2022
Ensuring secure collaboration under these changing conditions is challenging. With that in mind, here are five strategies your organization can implement to improve the security of your remote collaboration and communication.
Initiate a Detailed Data Security Audit
Data sharing is essential to effective collaboration. Before you can secure your company’s data you need to know just what data you need to secure. This argues in favor of a detailed data security audit that establishes:
- What types of data are stored
- Where the data is stored
- Who has access to which data
- How that data is currently security
- What known and emerging threats put that data at risk
Once you’ve completed your security audit you’ll be more informed as to what collaborative data you need to protect and how best to protect it.
Establish a Secure Collaboration Policy
Whether you’re dealing with dozens, hundreds, or thousands of remote employees it’s essential that you establish a secure collaboration policy for those workers to follow. You need to document every aspect of what your team members can and can’t do when communicating and collaborating with each other. This includes detailing:
- Which documents can be shared, both internally and externally
- Who has access to which documents
- Who has access to specific video, audio, and text chats and meetings
- What type of security is used to guard access to documents and communications
Your secure collaboration policy needs to be communicated to all employees, which probably requires some degree of employee training.
Implement Zero-Trust Access
Not every employee needs access to every file or meeting. It’s important to control access to all your valuable assets, which you can do by employing zero-trust access. A zero-trust model ensures that no one in your organization, no matter their level or title, gets automatic access to data. Access to specific data or communications should only be given to team members that need that access. (And access should be verified with strong passwords and multi-factor authentication.)
Ensure Compliance with All Applicable Regulations
Ensuring compliance with privacy regulations is essential. It’s important that all your employees, both in-house and remote, be aware of all relevant privacy regulations and how those regulations apply to their personal communications and collaboration. Employee compliance should also be strictly managed by your IT or IT security team.
Embrace a Unified Solution with Robust Security
According to a Metrigy report, 91% of companies currently use video conferencing and 68% have embraced team messaging and collaboration. It’s important that your secure collaboration solution include all the different ways that your employees collaborate and communication – video conferencing, audio calls, text messages, and file sharing – across all manner of work and personal devices.
The collaboration solution you choose needs to employ robust security for all types of communication at all stages of the process. The best collaboration platforms, such as Wickr, employ end-to-end encryption to ensure that no data or communications can be intercepted in transit. Your collaboration platform should also be designed to be compliant with all relevant privacy laws and regulations.
Employ Wickr as Part of Your Secure Collaboration Strategy in 2022
When you’re developing your organization’s secure collaboration strategy, turn to Wickr. Our secure collaboration platform employs end-to-end encryption and other military-grade security to ensure that text, voice, and video communications and data files cannot be hijacked or breached. When you want the most secure collaboration solution for your team, Wickr is the only logical choice.
Contact Wickr today to learn more about how our secure collaboration solution can benefit your organization.