The Five Fatal. Monster traps. of Corporate File Sharing. ... and How Administrators Can Easily and Safely Avoid Them.

Transcription

1 The Five Fatal Monster traps of Corporate File Sharing... and How Administrators Can Easily and Safely Avoid Them Supported by 1

2 The Five Fatal MONSTER TRAPS of Corporate File Sharing 1. The Compliance Monster 5 2. The Network Drive Monster 7 3. The Gadget Monster 9 4. The Look the Other Way Monster The Tool Monster 13 Conclusion 14

3 IT departments in companies are changing, there is no longer any doubt about that. Digital tools are part of our everyday routine in both personal and professional environments. The boundaries are becoming blurred and are disintegrating people are using their communication tools everywhere and all the time. Personal use spills over into professional use and vice versa. Smart phones, tablets, social media platforms and cloud services both enable and drive this development. This situation is often a nightmare for IT staff because employees are beginning to use their personal devices and cherished online tools also for professional purposes at the workplace. It might happen in order to work more flexibly, to leave the workplace earlier or at least on time and to complete neglected tasks later at home. The result: Valuable company files disappear from the IT department s sphere of control, which in turn attempts to counter this development with standard tools in a manner that is both time-consuming and organisational complicated. In the process IT often falls into the following five fatal monster traps. Fortunately, they can easily and safely be avoided using ShareFile: 3

4 1. Monster Trap: Compliance Rules for Data Usage

5 The Trapper: The Compliance Monster tempts employees to send their documents home for later editing and to create as many different file versions as possible. At the same time, IT administrators are lulled into believing they can avoid these problems through the use of compliance policies. This is how the trap works in practise: Compliance rules are among the most popular solutions in a company s IT. These are written sets of rules intended to regulate the handling of data and devices. Regrettably, people are forgetful or prefer to trust their instincts rather than regulations and laws in difficult situations. Some of these difficult situations in companies include overwork, a lack of time and job pressure. u The escape plan: Compliance rules are well justified, but they can only be effective if employees are actually following them. An ideal approach for administrators would be to enable employees to access work files with any device and from any location provided, of course, that the highest security requirements are observed. The file sharing, synchronisation and archiving tool ShareFile offers extensive administration tools allowing complete control of in- and outbound corporate data, no matter what device is being used. For the IT, this means: Support staff no longer needs to worry about an array of heterogeneous devices, but can manage the entire file traffic from one central location. 5

6 2. Monster Trap: Network Drives for Teams and Departments

7 The Trapper: The Network Drive Monster is a constructor of obstacle courses. This monster prefers to deploy complicated technology in order to delay projects and to convince entire teams to use private file transfer services. Its objective has been reached when critical corporate data can fall into the hands of data thieves and IT staff are near despair. This is how the trap works in practise: Since team members are increasingly working in different locations, the IT department provides network drives that the employees can access via a secure virtual private network (VPN). The problem: When maintenance is being performed on the file server, employees have no access to the system. The integration of the network drive is too complicated for non-technical employees, resulting in increased support requirements for installations and maintenance of the device. Approval processes and the training of new team members take additional time. For the most part, IT staff cannot see what happens to the files on the network drive (see case 1). u The escape plan: IT departments use ShareFile to provide employees or teams with a cloud-based file drive. Control over the files and drives always remains with the IT department. Employees no longer need to rely on consumer file sharing alternatives. It is just as easy for employees to use as the privately used services they are accustomed to. It works the same as accessing a regular hard drive, e.g. via Windows Explorer. 7

8 3. Monster Trap: Use of Private Gadgets for Company Purposes

9 The Trapper: The Gadget Monster lurks for opportunities to disseminate files as widely as possible and to intrench itself on as many devices as possible. From there it takes mischievous pleasure in observing how IT administrators lose track of their infrastructure. This is how the trap works in practise: The work styles of knowledge workers have changed radically in recent years. Globalisation and fast communication media demand more flexibility from employees in terms of availability, which is no longer compatible with the traditional 8-hour day. On the other hand, this also holds true for one s private life, where many personal appointments occur during normal working hours. Therefore, many people use their favourite devices, such as smart phones, for both. It does make sense because the traditional rigid separation of private and work time is a relic of the industrial age. u The escape plan: Companies have to realise that the workplace is no longer a central place where employees meet at regular hours to perform their tasks. Administrators need a tool that enables them to provide employees access to files from any location and device. ShareFile provides a secure file environment on nearly every device that the IT department can manage from a central location. Mobile apps for smart phones and tablets allow for mobile use. Provisions are even made for emergencies: If a device is stolen, IT staff can remotely delete all files. For IT administrators, ShareFile is an ideal building block for extensive bring your own device programmes (BYOD). 9

10 4. Monster Trap: Blind Faith and the Look the Other Way Mentality

11 The Trapper: The Look the Other Way Monster does everything to lull the vigilance of innocent IT administrators. It especially lulls administrators into the false sense of security that everything will somehow turn out well. This is how the trap works in practise: What I don t know can t hurt me is a principle that many employees apply. This is due to mounting deadline pressures and increased workloads. Unfortunately, this also occurs in overworked IT departments. Many IT administrators are aware that employees use personal devices for business purposes and take files home with them, but they close one or both eyes to it because so far everything s gone well and there is not enough staff to take effective action throughout the company. In a pinch, the compliance rules apply (see monster case 1). u The escape plan: Problems are not solved by looking the other way. Earlier technical solutions, such as locked floppy or CD drives, no longer prevent anyone from sharing files with others or extracting files from company servers. Today, an Internet connection and a web-based address are all that is needed to distribute even large files. More importantly: Employees do not want to do without the technology that makes their lives easier and which they are already successfully using privately. Instead of enforcing restrictions, IT departments are better off to offer manageable technical solutions such as FileShare. They do themselves a favour in two different ways: The IT department gains a great reputation within the company and is able to take back control of the company files without any additional effort. 11

12 5.Monster Trap: Tools for Encrypting Files

13 The Trapper: The Tool Monster mostly passes itself off as the IT staff s best friend. It likes to make promises and shows off with a plethora of unmanageable functions. It installs them so skillfully and in such a complicated manner that no user wants to redeem those promises. This is how the trap works in practise: IT administrators love to disseminate encryption tools especially in development departments or to employees working in the field or on the road. There are many strong and free encryption tools available. Unfortunately, their consequent application requires discipline and technical skill. And even when users consequently utilise the encryption tools and even install them on their personal devices, a residual risk remains because in most cases only the files are encrypted, not their actual transmission. Often the well-intended plan fails just by exchanging files with external customers and service providers because they either do not have the tools or use different ones or they simply don t want to encrypt the data. u The escape plan: To encrypt important data throughout the company there is ultimately only one ideal solution: it must be performed automatically and comprehensively, rather than selectively by the individual employee. Small and medium-sized companies often have problems with this because they often do not have a designated data security officer or the necessary know-how to implement such requirements. Moreover, there is also the risk that employees pressed for time will think Nothing will happen anyway and not manually encrypt the data in a stringent manner. Again, ShareFile offers a way out by strongly encrypting all files on the virtual drive and during their transmission. The individual employee doesn t need to do anything himself. 13

14 Conclusion When it comes to the control over mission-critical files, monsters have already cleverly entrenched themselves in IT departments and set their traps. They all have one thing in common: They depict problems that are easy to solve in an unnecessarily complicated way and add to the workload of the IT department. With ShareFile, IT administrators can fend them off, increase the security of critical data, regain control and at the same time substantially reduce their workload. Best in Mobile Cloud Solution 14

15 About ShareFile: ShareFile s software has been created with security in mind. Each user in the system has a unique login and password. All user-created passwords are hashed in the ShareFile database, meaning that not even ShareFile support personnel have the ability to determine a user s password. Granular access permissions allow users to be given access to information on an account on a need to know basis. ShareFile has a daily third party security scan through McAfee SECURE. The appearance of the McAfee SECURE seal on our login page indicates that ShareFile has passed the security audit. If McAfee SECURE ever finds an alert that causes us to fail the security audit, the seal will temporarily disappear until the security hole is repaired. All communications between ShareFile and the user are encrypted using either Secure Socket Layer (SSL) or Transport Layer Security (TLS) encryption protocols and up to AES 256- bit encryption. This is the same industry-standard protocol used by online banking and popular e-commerce services such as Amazon.com for secure communication over the internet. u u u To learn more about ShareFile, please visit: sharefile.gotomeeting.co.uk Test ShareFile for free or contact our sales team at: GoTo Blog at: blog.citrixonline.com 15

16 North America 7414 Hollister Avenue Goleta, CA U.S.A. T info@citrixonline.com Europe, Middle East & Africa Citrix Online UK Ltd Chalfont Park House Chalfont Park, Gerrards Cross Bucks SL9 0DZ United Kingdom T +44 (0) europe@citrixonline.com Asia Pacific Level 3, 1 Julius Ave Riverside Corporate Park North Ryde NSW 2113 Australia T asiapac@citrixonline.com About Citrix Citrix (NASDAQ:CTXS) is the cloud company that enables mobile workstyles empowering people to work and collaborate from anywhere, easily and securely. With market-leading solutions for mobility, desktop virtualisation, cloud networking, cloud platforms, collaboration and data sharing, Citrix helps organisations achieve the speed and agility necessary to succeed in a mobile and dynamic world. Citrix products are in use at more than 330,000 organisations and by over 100 million users globally. Learn more at Citrix Online, UK Ltd. All rights reserved. Citrix, GoToAssist, GoToMeeting, GoToMyPC, GoToTraining, GoToWebinar, Podio and ShareFile are trademarks of Citrix or a subsidiary thereof, and are or may be registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and other countries. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. Android is a trademark of Google Inc. Mac, ipad and iphone are trademarks of Apple, Inc., registered in the U.S. and other countries. 395EN_B/