How to Handle Confidential Information when Working from Home

“This message will self-destruct in 5… 4… 3… 2…”

While we can find humor in old taglines from Mission Impossible, Inspector Gadget, and other spy-genre media, the relevance of such phrases cannot be overlooked when dealing with confidential information. This year, 2020, has brought with it many new challenges as we find our operations and working models disrupted due to the “new norm” of virtual working teams and at-home workforces, especially when it comes to working with confidential information.

Within our organizations, we have proprietary information, sensitive financial data, and content that necessitates limited visibility with only a select few team members able to access and edit said content. Additionally, we have our clients’ information, which they entrust us to safeguard. Historically, this has proved problematic and an ongoing challenge for most organizations around the world. Now, in 2020, these complexities have been magnified even further by removing the safety devices and traditional protection strategies that our IT teams leverage.

File-Based Solutions and Share Drives Leave your Organization Vulnerable

Prior to the pandemic and the global migration to virtual workforces, IT teams were able to implement a “House of Control” via internal technologies such as firewalls, Single-Sign-On (SSO), and monitoring technologies scanning internal databases and access points in real time. But now, amidst the pandemic, most of our team members are no longer working at the office, beholden to these digital iron-gated technology protections.

Without the House of Control of our firewalls, internal databases, and technology safety measures, the challenge for management becomes how does one control the accessibility, visibility, editing rights, and information governance that such solutions provided?

Are file-based share drives enough? File exchange and storage solutions that, once penetrated, leave all your data available and exposed? Well, global hackers and corporate espionage experts certainly hope you believe so…

Regardless of the level of encryption deployed, file-based solutions and share drives will always leave your organization vulnerable, limit your Information Governance, and your control of sensitive data accessibility for your team. If you believe this is overstated, just do a quick Google search on Julian Assange and Eric Snowden; all these incidents came from leaks and data breaches on government-secured share drives. If it can happen to the military, it can happen to your organization as well.

Let Xait Put Your Mind at Ease

But rest assured, there are time-proven solutions to these challenges. Solutions that will allow your team to not only operate virtually but operate with greater efficiencies than ever before. These solutions will enforce the House of Control and Information Governance that IT demands while safeguarding the confidential information of your organization as well as that of your clients. Even with virtual, globally dispersed workforces, you can set, maintain, and monitor your content accessibility while simultaneously increasing your team’s efficiencies well beyond pre-pandemic, in-office levels.

If this is a challenge your team is facing and a worry that you have, let us set up a time to chat and discuss how we can put your mind at ease.

Stay safe. Stay well.