Have Your Cloud and Eat It Too: Three Practices for Secure and Convenient Collaboration

This article originally appeared on Carahsoft's website. Carahsoft is a valued Accellion partner.

In a recent survey by Dimensional Research, one issue became abundantly clear: employees perceive an exclusive divide between secure communication and convenient communication. Of the surveyed team members, 24 percent reported knowingly violating data security protocols at work, such as accessing confidential files on public Wi-Fi, because they “just wanted to get their job done.”

Employees preferred productivity to security, even when trained in data handling protocols. The issue does not limit itself to one industry: compromising actions were reported in the financial services, education and healthcare industries, as well as in government organizations. Overall, 72 percent of employees reported they were willing to share “sensitive, confidential, or regulated information.”

In an environment where employees view information security as a burden and administrators view it as a necessity, how should companies keep control over data as public sharing platforms, like Google Drive, and personal smart devices proliferate? Government agencies and enterprises can use three best practices to implement cloud collaboration solutions without losing efficiency.