If you don’t take care of your customers, someone else will.

This is a tried-and-tested mantra of business, proven over millennia of people doing business with each other. And the businesses that thrive are those who realise that not only is the customer always right…but if they don’t take care of her, she will find one of their competitors who will.

However, despite the number of businesses who grasp this concept with regards to their customers, a great number of them do not apply this concept in the area of taking care of their employees. Sure, they may pay them a competitive salary with accompanying benefits, provide a pleasant working atmosphere etc.

But despite all of this, many businesses fail by not giving their employees everything they need to do the jobs they were hired to do. And the most glaring and consequential omission by employers is in their failure to give their employees a safe, secure and convenient cloud file sharing system.

As a result, business units and work groups sign up for cloud services independent of any involvement from the company’s IT department…creating serious risks for their enterprise.

These risks include:

  • Inadvertent exposure of regulated data
  • Improper access and control over protected and confidential data and intellectual property
  • Breaching of rules pertaining to how some data should be handled

And according to Cara Beston, cloud risk assurance leader at PricewaterhouseCoopers, this indiscriminate subscription to cloud services for business purposes is practiced because it is easy and relatively inexpensive to do.

Beston added, “There is a new form of shadow IT and it is likely more pervasive across the company…It is harder to find, because it is being procured at small cost and is no longer operating within the bounds of the company.”

The risks of this ‘shadow IT’ are particularly consequential for companies operating in regulated industries. These companies face the real risk of becoming non-compliant with privacy, data security and cloud file sharing obligations without even realising it.

But whilst the obvious solution might be to eliminate all ‘shadow IT’ practices and insist that all company employees use a cloud file sharing system developed specifically for the company…most businesses do not have the budget to develop and scale a data sharing system that is secure and convenient to use. The costs and resources for such a project would cause many businesses to overlook the potential risks of using cloud-based solutions under the nose of IT.

However, these risks are very real and have very serious consequences for businesses unwittingly caught out by them. This is the reason why we developed our suite of cloud file sharing solutions for our customers. We wanted to give them the flexibility and convenience of the Saas products they’re accustomed to using…whilst underpinning them with rigorous, premium-grade security features.

Security features such as:

  • Upload/download notifications…providing accountability for each file transaction
  • Link expiry options…ensuring files can only be accessed within a stated time period
  • Password protected links…limiting file access to authorised individuals
  • HTTPS encryption in transit…providing security to data as it traverses across networks
  • AES 256 encryption at rest…securing data held in storage
  • PGP encryption…cryptographic privacy and authentication for data communication
  • HIPAA compliance…enabling companies to meet compliance regulations
  • Data residency…allowing administrators to know the exact location of company data
  • Users ‘jailed’ to home folders…allowing administrators to restrict and specify user access to specific files

And to provide even more security, Maytech underwent a rigorous process of attaining ISO 27001 certification, HIPAA compliance, Skyhigh CloudTrust™ rating and other achievements to become a leading secure cloud service vendor in the marketplace.

All of this is to make the simple point that there’s no reason for you not to provide your employees with a secure, flexible and convenient cloud file sharing product like the ones we offer our customers here at Maytech.

And when you do, your employees will have no need to look for an alternative – and potentially non-secure – solution elsewhere.

Interested in a free trial of our entire cloud file sharing suite of products? Visit the Maytech website and get started in seconds by clicking here now.

Read More: The Tug-of-War Over Your Data: How the CLOUD and SHIELD Acts Pit Security vs. Privacy