As collaboration software grows more popular throughout the enterprise, companies from all backgrounds are beginning to ask what they can do to keep their distributed teams secure. Now that people are sending countless pieces of crucial information across the cloud through services like Slack and Microsoft Teams, it’s essential for them to know that their data is safe.
Slack, one of the best-known collaboration vendors in the market, recently introduced their new Enterprise Key Management (EKM) system to help boost compliance and security for enterprise users. During a Slack Frontiers event in London, the Chief Product Officer at Slack, April Underwood explained that the EKM solution would give administrators the option to turn access off to data at any stage. The EKM service will be launched on Enterprise Grid this winter.
Recent Updates from Slack Frontiers
Designed to provide better protection for your sensitive data, and support the latest GDPR requirements, Slack Enterprise Key Management will give users complete control of the keys they use to decrypt and encrypt the data sent and stored on Slack. Additionally, the collaboration company also revealed new capabilities for integrations with third-party apps, intended to boost the overall experience that customers get on Slack.
According to April, the range of new software applications, combined with updated security on Slack should help today’s users to be more productive in their day-to-day work. Some more recent integrations include Zendesk, Asana, and updates with Atlassian following the recent partnership announced in July 2018.
Interestingly, unlike many of the collaboration vendors that aim to “kill the email,” Slack has also been experimenting with new ways to add email into their system. According to Underwood, in 2017, Slack predicted that channels would be crucial to the workflow by 2025. Adding email as an alternative channel allows Slack to provide their customers with a broad range of ways to communicate. Recently, Slack even purchased Astro, an email infrastructure firm to access email enhanced with machine learning and advanced scheduling features.
The idea is that the recent acquisitions, along with a healthy plan of action from Slack leaders, will allow Slack to become the ultimate hub of productivity for the workforce. When you can connect conversations from virtually any platform in the same Slack environment, you can provide your employees with the single pane of glass solution that they need for better workplace efficiency.
Monzo Achieves Exceptional Results with Slack
Slack isn’t opposed to showing off its success when necessary too. Recently, the company published a case study with an emerging digital bank company, Monzo. Monzo is one of the most innovative banking solutions in the UK today, and Slack was keen to show how its collaboration platform could help this business to thrive.
According to Monzo, they’re particularly thrilled with the email integration option, which they say has helped them to cut down on inbox overflow for their teams. According to Monzo’s chief technology officer, Meri Williams, after she joined the company earlier in the year, she’s now receiving fewer than 30 emails from internal staff members each week.
Aside from streamlining the communication process, Monzo’s use of Slack allows them to maintain a constant flow of communication across all teams – particularly in the engineering sector. There’s also the option to make sure that Monzo can keep transparency with their team members and ensure that everyone has a strategy in place for ongoing security and privacy. According to the Monzo case study, the IT support team frequently uses Slack bots to make actions like changing passwords as simple as possible. What’s more, according to Williams, Slack has helped the business to cut down on issues of fraud.
Within the Slack case study, Monzo even revealed that they’ve been exploring other security options with their Slack system, including the opportunity to use two-factor authentication. For human users, Slack believes that two-factor authentication makes it easier for them to keep their customers safe. As Williams said, if someone asks for something sensitive like a new key on Slack, then the operational team will be able to take the request and verify whether the person is a real customer, via phone, or in-person conversation.
The new security features and integrations are sure to come in handy for Monzo’s continued success with Slack, as well as offering new ways for Slack to differentiate itself in the collaboration market.
