Remote working has seen a massive spike over the last 12 months with people all over the world suddenly working from home. However, the trend has been steadily on the rise for the last decade with a 91% growth in people working remotely since 2010, according to Flexjobs research.
The benefits are manifold for both employees and organisations. For example, IBM reduced its real estate costs by $50 million and full-time remote work saves $10,000-a-year per employee, according to a Global Workplace Analytics study.
Despite these benefits, managing a remote workforce presents major privacy challenges for organisations. With employees working from different locations, data is now spread across internal IT networks, external endpoint devices, and various collaboration applications. This means ensuring control of information and document access and privacy have never been more difficult.
The threats of poor storage and privacy
The risks of poor data storage practices is highlighted by small businesses losing out to larger competitors, which have more resources to manage and gain value from their data. For example, Cohesity research found that 18% of small businesses claimed up to 75% of deals had been lost to larger businesses and 27% of smaller companies lost up to 50% of deals.
Furthermore, the study found that businesses spend huge amounts of time on data management. On average, IT teams spent 40% of their time installing and maintaining their data infrastructure, while 22% of organisations’ IT teams spend up to 75% of their time managing their data infrastructure.
Poor data management can lead to businesses suffering data loss and being vulnerable to cyber attacks. This, in turn, can result in a loss of revenue, market share, and customer confidence, and may lead to them being subject to regulatory punishment, substantial fines, and even criminal or civil suits.
Storing business information
To take control of their data, organisations need a storage solution that adapts to the anywhere and anytime nature of today’s remote workforce. This means storing project information, such as contracts and scope changes, in a centralised location that all employees can access at any time and from anywhere.
Storing this information in a central location removes the risk of vital project information being locked away in individual inboxes or being stored on users’ desktops, which makes it inaccessible to their colleagues.
Correspondence is the forgotten piece of the puzzle
It’s not just documents and project files that need to be stored securely and centrally. Many project agreements or changes to project scope are agreed to or confirmed via communication channels such as email or various instant messaging applications.
Businesses need to ensure that their sensitive emails and text messages are also stored in a centralised location, and have the same privacy protocols as other documents.
How Mail Manager delivers privacy control
Mail Manager’s solution enables organisations to automatically file emails and documents in a secure, centralised location that follows their privacy and security procedures. It acts as a bridge between businesses’ email inboxes and their company infrastructure, which enables them to choose where vital project information is stored.
Mail Manager organises information into Collections, which are broken down into Locations. Collections mirror businesses’ existing filing structures and can be located on an internal server, cloud server, or an ERP, while Locations break this down into individual projects and topics. Filing information centrally in this way enables full visibility across business information and reduces the risk of document duplication. It means sensitive emails and documents can be saved in locations that have restricted access rights, which ensures only people with the right level of access can view or open them.
Importantly, Mail Manager automatically files emails into the most appropriate location. The solution learns employees filing habits and where specific communication needs to be stored in order to immediately file both received emails and sent messages in centralised folders. This removes the risk of important project information being lost, deleted, or locked away in individual inboxes.
It’s also crucial for employees to be able to find specific information as soon as they need it. Mail Manager’s search function enables users to find any document or email from across their databases within two seconds. This is crucial with people working remotely, enabling staff to get immediate access to project information whenever they need it.
Data access best practices
Securing access to sensitive information is reliant on following several best practices. For example, businesses need to:
- Restrict view and read access to sensitive documents and emails.
- Ensure uniformity across their data storage and email filing processes.
- Ensure all employees can immediately discover correspondence associated with a client or project when they need it.
- Ensure project information isn’t stored on employees’ desktops or in folders within their email inboxes.
Mail Manager can help your business to boost privacy levels by storing all communication and documents in a secure location. Get a free trial below.
