High-profile data breaches in 2017 that compromised the names, emails, physical addresses, and personal bank details of millions of North Americans should underscore the difficulty of a keeping internal data safe. With companies as sophisticated as Yahoo, LinkedIn, Tumblr, Honda and Kmart all targets of massive hacks, how can smaller firms with more limited resources hope to stave off the efforts of unscrupulous cyber-criminals?
Alternatively, with data now clearly identified as the crown jewel of any business hoping to thrive in the digital age, how can any company not dedicate the resources required to mitigate the risks? The show must go on — no matter what, businesses must retain the ability to share documents and deliver key information to internal and external stakeholders.
Security (or the lack thereof)
With the global emergence of Wannacry ransomware and successful attacks on such world-class organizations, corporate IT departments worldwide are on high alert. Most are either planning or acting on a new security strategy. As the recent CanadianCIO Census indicated, security is the number one issue keeping IT leaders awake at night.
While more powerful technology and productivity tools have made for better workplace collaboration, they have also opened new avenues by which sensitive organizational data can be lost (and with it, possible financial and reputational loss). Adding social media, mobile devices and apps to the mix complicate the security picture, with the result being that the modern enterprise cannot simply build a strong perimeter and count on it for protection.
BlackBerry Workspaces
There are many ways document loss can hurt a company: sensitive strategic and financial information can fall into competitors’ hands; thieves can secure banking details, and confidential personal data can be used in a future lawsuit. Such potentially dire outcomes call for companies to be vigilant, and to move aggressively from merely discussing document security solutions to deciding on one and implementing it in their business.
With BlackBerry Workspaces, enterprise users can easily and effectively access, share, and control documents on any smartphone, PC, or tablet — even those outside the corporate firewall. Protection-embedded documents can be tracked and controlled regardless of their physical or virtual location, or on what type of device they are accessed.
Features plus
BlackBerry Workspaces offers many features, including but not limited to:
- Control – ability to restrict who can view, edit, print, and forward documents
- Tracking – visibility into who views, edits, downloads, forwards, and prints documents, and where and when they do it; maintains a full audit trail for compliance purposes
- Remote management – admins can control or change access to documents at any time, even after they have been downloaded
- File sync – real-time updates of all documents accessed through the various Workspaces end-user interfaces
- File locking – ability to prevent duplication of effort by temporally limiting access to a document while it is being edited
- Workspace – ability to create a website to allow for document collaboration; new sites can be created on external repositories
Balance the key
It’s a fact: severe, convoluted security measures hamper workplace productivity and prevent sharing across organizational boundaries and between different types of devices. The key to Workplaces is in how it strikes a balance between productivity and security — it allows for the full flexibility that is so important in today’s cloud- and IoT-driven business world while ensuring security is airtight and control is always in the hands of document owners.
In a mobile world and a booming IoT that already connects billions of endpoints, enterprises can no longer count on the network perimeter. Those days are past. Workspaces, which can be deployed as a cloud-based solution, as a dedicated private cloud, or as an on-premises virtual appliance, is already being used by thousands of organizations in many industries, including healthcare, legal, and technology.
BlackBerry has produced a white paper that describes how BlackBerry® Workspaces helps organizations ensure sensitive files and content can be shared and accessed securely from any device. Download “Ensuring Document Security Across Any Device with BlackBerry Workspaces” today.
