Security Risks Of Using Collaboration Tools For Your Business

Reports show security is a major concern when using a collaboration tool because it houses the customer data and also important internal data.

The benefits of collaboration tools are spoken everywhere: less reliance on email, more organic collaboration on projects, and better communication and relationships between teams.

Collaboration tools consist of solutions, including video conferencing, VoIP, document sharing, and instant messaging.

However, these tools create potential security threats, and evaluating vulnerabilities — and viable solutions — should be a sustainable part of our tool-selection process.

Security Threats To Be Aware Of — And Potential Solutions

Privileged users: Different individuals in the organization may have varying levels of access to your collaboration tool. With collaboration software, information can reside within unique partitions, with access restricted to selected team members. If a privileged user’s information is compromised, then the entire data will be available to all.

 Solution: Permit administrators to set up tight controls around what information users can see, set alerts when accounts try to access the information they’re not permitted to see, and offer the ability to immediately terminate access rights for an account that’s been compromised.

Login credential: Collaboration tools often follow a username and password login model. If they’re hacked, an employee’s access can quickly give outsiders a direct line to financial information, proprietary company data, and client information.

Solution: Strict password policy with two-factor authentication using SMS in mobile can solve this problem immediately

Internet threats: Collaboration tools are accessed through the public Internet, which exposes the data to several different threats, including malware and unauthorized tracking.

Solution: Using a secure VPN connection. Employees must provide credentials to gain access to mission-critical data that will prevent exposure to the internet using VPN.

Summary settings: Summary mails or financial data mails, when exposed to vulnerabilities in the email will leak out all the data to the outsiders and also the outsiders will get inside through it.

Solution: Collaboration tools should provide a summary that can be accessed by the users by their level in an organizational role.

URL-related issues: Certain hackers can gain access to company sites by simply following the standard protocols for Web-based apps. At the same time, many collaboration tools pull metadata into URLs in the software itself, which can inadvertently reveal confidential data.

Solution: Choose a collaboration solution that allows your IT team the flexibility to control security settings and determine a URL structure, which is both customized and secure.

Choosing a solution

Being aware of the security risks associated with collaboration tools can’t stop using them. But the best collaboration tool should require End to End visibility and a high-performance monitoring security threats and the ability to quickly implement changes. Constant training and changes in practices should be implemented to avoid new threats. Moreover, the vendor should support a successful solution rollout.

The benefits of collaboration tools are significant. On the other hand, we need plans to address security threats, which include selecting the best vendors like Mongrov, who can guide you in implementing the secured collaboration platform.