How to make your information mobile, accessible and secured

The distinction between 'personal' and 'business' devices is rapidly blurring. And why not? It's incredibly convenient. You just need one phone or tablet or laptop for everything, and you can just use all of your familiar messaging and collaboration by using your personal consumer apps at work.

While the convenience is undeniable, that attitude also sends a chill down the spine of IT departments everywhere. Using those familiar personal apps at work make your personal life so convenient can also make it incredibly difficult to create a fully collaborative, secured work environment.

For people to collaborate everything must be searchable and accessible across your entire network using secure business apps.

Security and compliance concerns

Office workers upload company files to a personal email or cloud account using consumer apps at work leads to a security nightmare for IT. Corporate data is only as secure as the password-setting, link-clicking and device-losing habits of individual employees. If an employee leaves the company but has sensitive records stored in a personal cloud service, there's not much their former employer can do about it.

There are also compliance problems when consumer apps at work cannot reliably meet government standards, including HIPPA, FERPA and PCI.

Consumer apps at work create information silos

One side effect of using consumer apps at work to share and store files is that they're accessible by only a designated few within the organization. This makes company-wide collaboration impossible because it creates silos of information.

Invisible files caught up in private clouds and on individual mobile devices are not just inconvenient — they create a much less productive environment.

Business apps provide a better way to collaborate

Employees may be the ones choosing to use unsanctioned consumer apps at work but it's often due to the fact that the tools provided by their employer don't suit their needs. The best way to curb the issue is to provide an approved secured business app and content management solution that all employees can leverage a fully searchable data environment.

Business apps and content management tools provide a way to transfer, store and manage documents across multiple devices and networks. Whether files are placed on a corporate network, with customers, partners or on mobile devices, they are accessible and searchable from any remote device. IT can also help enforce security measures -- such as authentication, encryption and tracking features – on business apps.

Cloud

Through the evolution of the cloud and content management tools have come a long way from the complex models of the past. Now groups within an organization can access, edit and distribute files in real time.

Picking the right solution allows you to configure it not just to your users' needs, but your IT requirements as well. The needs of every organization are different. Cloud services come in many options that accommodate the needs of small and large businesses with various levels of security and compliance. With mobile computing and using personal apps in the workplace is only growing more prevalent, these solutions are becoming a must-have.