Collaboration tools have quickly evolved from a nice-to-have feature in the business technology stack to an essential investment. These solutions give employees a convenient way to share ideas, files, and data and are becoming “work hubs” for hybrid and remote employees.
Today, virtually every business relies on solutions from the likes of Slack, RingCentral, Webex, Microsoft Teams, and Zoom to unify and synchronize their teams. These tools empower organizations to embrace the benefits of hybrid work and enhance communication on a core level. However, they also come with various security and compliance issues to consider.
Collaboration software opens the door to various communication methods (voice, video, SMS/text), all of which must be effectively monitored and managed to reduce risk. Fortunately, there are ways companies can boost the security of their collaboration system.
“When the pandemic struck, the first order of business was for organizations to ramp up and accelerate usage of modern unified communication platforms to be productive”, said Devin Redmond, CEO and co-founder of Theta Lake. He continued “We’re now seeing the rapid need to address existing compliance requirements and new security concerns as witnessed by the SEC and CFTC’s fines of more than 2B in the last year. As such, firms need to take a systematic approach to how they support this breakthrough in productive collaboration, while adhering to regulatory requirements and maintaining a secure posture and addressing potential security gaps”.
Step 1: Choose the Right Collaboration Software
The collaboration software market is currently toward an expected value of $56.67bn by 2030. As companies look forward to a more diverse “future of work,” collaboration tools have become a must-have part of any ecosystem.
Choosing the right collaboration software from day one should help businesses preserve their security. Many leading tools like Zoom, Webex, RingCentral, Slack and Microsoft Teams already have strong security components to assist companies. These platforms include end-to-end encryption, access management control, and multi-factor authentication.
When choosing the right ecosystem, business leaders need to focus on evaluating the security capabilities of each tool and how effectively these solutions adhere to their existing regulatory compliance and safety policies.
Step 2: Know Which Data to Capture
Remaining compliant in today’s landscape means knowing which information to capture and how to manage that information effectively. The multi-channel nature of many collaboration tools means companies will often need to think beyond simply storing call recordings and text files. Brands must also be prepared to capture context-rich information from video, SMS, and email.
Aside from simply capturing data correctly, businesses must also ensure they can align all the information they collect in the right environment. Creating a comprehensive and compliant archive for compliance review and eDiscovery will give companies more control over their information.
Robust encryption systems and intelligent tools should protect data storage solutions for access control. At the same time, they should be able to collect and unify information from multiple platforms while preserving context and fidelity, as many of today’s businesses rely on more than one tool for collaboration.
Step 3: Find a Complementary Compliance Platform
While many collaboration and communication platforms in the modern landscape come with compliance and security features built-in, they rarely offer the same comprehensive features as a complete security platform. When choosing the ideal collaboration system, business leaders should ensure their platform can integrate with a tool designed to enhance compliance.
A complementary compliance solution should allow companies to set rule-based retention policies for data shared in collaboration tools. It also needs to be able to collect contextual information from all videos, text-based discussions, and audio throughout the ecosystem. Brands should prioritize compliance solutions offering powerful tools and templates for detecting risks relevant to their company or industry.
For instance, many leading compliance solutions will provide general coverage templates for tracking issues connected to GDPR, PCI, and PII. However, the most effective tools can also deliver more focused support for different industry requirements, such as HIPAA, FINRA, and MiFID II.
Step 4: Leverage Automation and AI
As the workplace and collaboration landscapes grow more complex, keeping track of security and compliance across a diverse ecosystem can be extremely difficult to manage manually. Intelligent, automated tools can reduce the pressure on business leaders to ensure they’re up-to-date with the latest risks facing their team members.
Intelligent tools can automatically detect potential problems in scripts, calls, and transcriptions without human intervention so that security leaders can be instantly alerted to emerging issues. These tools can apply risk scores to different issues and help companies prioritize which problems to address first. Additionally, they can dive deeper into the components of conversations with machine learning and natural language processing.
Intelligent automation also paves the way for more rapid issue management and discovery. Smart workflows built into a compliance strategy can make it easier to rapidly collect and store data throughout the collaboration landscape, according to pre-set policies.
Step 5: Train Staff Members Consistently
While the right collaboration software and complementary tools can make a huge difference in how compliant a business is in the evolving world of work, it’s important not to underestimate the value of training. Ultimately, around 82% of data breaches involve a human element, such as an employee exposing information by accident or making a mistake in their work.
After implementing the right tools for security and compliance, companies need to ensure their team members know how to operate effectively, efficiently, and securely in all environments. Staff should know which data to record in a call and how they can ensure their connections are secure when connecting to the network away from the business.
As the regulatory landscape continues to evolve, compliance training can’t be a set-it-and-forget-it practice for today’s companies. Organizations need to ensure they’re constantly providing their team members with updated insights to help them protect themselves, the company data, and the information they collect from customers.
Ensure Compliant Collaboration
While collaboration tools are a must-have for today’s businesses, they can also be the source of many issues associated with security and compliance. Implementing the right strategy for protecting employees and data across channels like Slack, Webex, Zoom, RingCentral, and Microsoft Teams ensures business leaders can avoid painful compliance violations, and subsequent fines in addition to guarding against insider threats, data breaches and data loss.
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