Why You Should Stop Sharing and Start Collaborating

Why You Should Stop Sharing and Start Collaborating

In the past, business transactions mainly featured face-to-face interaction, but the internet has significantly changed the way things run. Nowadays, brands interact with their customers in a more “faceless” approach, which has paved the way for lots of vulnerabilities. As cloud computing and IoT devices continue to grow, more security risks and challenges come forth. The world of today faces a pressing, evolving predicament in cyberspace. The online capabilities of your business adversaries are fast outpacing traditional stove-piped defense mechanisms. Cyber threats nowadays exceed the danger presented by physical attacks against your company’s IT infrastructure and data. Indeed, cybersecurity approaches used since the ’90s are no longer viable in the cybersecurity realities of the 21st century. This includes the use of firewalls, antivirus, and passwords. Considering how complex today’s interconnected world has become, collaborating can be the only viable solution for protecting businesses and data.

This detailed guide compares the traditional security setup and advanced collaborating tools to give you a clear picture of why you should stop sharing and begin collaborating.

Why Traditional Set-Ups Are No Longer Effective

Traditional business setups leverage physical servers in their server rooms. These are usually protected by top-shelf, enterprise-level firewalls and run by highly trained and qualified IT specialists. Company employees also work within a secured environment where they use corporate workstations that require them to log in using their usernames and unique passwords.

Breaking these down to the five distinct threat stations leaves us with the following:

Identity Threats

Traditional security approaches focus on ensuring the user is who they claim to be. But these approaches may fail to detect any suspicious activities or locations. There’s also the risk of creating guessable usernames and weak logging in credentials. This can be a significant risk, hence nullifies the effectiveness of traditional cybersecurity approaches.

Device Threats

This covers any threats that can affect your workstation. With a traditional system, you may encounter issues with lost and stolen company devices, and there’s a significant risk of a ransomware attack. Unmanaged home devices also pose considerable security jeopardies. What’s more, there’s a big issue with protecting data-at-rest, which is among attackers’ key targets.

Application Threats

This covers any applications with their own compromisable security. Applications are a vital gateway to the company’s valuable data, so they’re among the most preferred targets by attackers. Advanced applications consist of separate components connected over networks; hence there are many avenues through which malicious individuals can try to access your vital data.

Email Threats

Usually, emails are sent via untrusted networks. In essence, these are any external networks outside your company’s security scope. Without adequate security safeguards, email messages are simply postcards that malicious individuals can copy, read, or modify along the paths.

Common threats include malware, social engineering, phishing and spam, and unintentional mistakes by authorized users. Traditional strategies can’t address all these or alert you whenever there’s an email threat.

Document Threats

Businesses use file-sharing networks to transmit data over the web. But these programs offer several security risks. For instance, you can’t stop people from sharing your business’s confidential documents. Print documents out to share with anyone outside the company by your most trusted employees. Traditional cybersecurity approaches like firewalls, antivirus, and antivirus cannot address the above threats.

Why Collaboration Tools Win

Modern systems can either be used on-premise or on the cloud. Either way, it applies modern security features that can overcome advanced threats to your IT infrastructure and data. Advanced collaborative security features don’t require any special hardware or software. The solutions open the doors, allowing any authorized individuals to use any device from any location securely.

Here are the different ways in which modern security approaches address the common threats:

Identity Security

Advanced systems use multi-factor authentication to verify users’ identities by sending unique verification codes to their cellphones. These systems also use AI to compare respective users’ activities and location to an expansive database with trillions of security alerts to confirm their identity. A combination of AI threat detection and self-service password qualifies collaboration as a reliable approach.

Device Security

Through collaboration, mobile devices and laptops can be fully managed from a centralized location. In case a device is stolen or lost, you can easily wipe out the corporate data within or even lock the device through drive encryption.

Application Security

The system augments application security, so users only need their log-in credentials to log into any third-party applications without struggling with memorizing other passwords. As such, employees can access sensitive information securely from any location. You can also control access using a single sign-on.

Email Security

Collaborative cybersecurity tools can apply data-loss prevention to emails leaving the organization and prevent unauthorized transfer of the company’s sensitive data. They also verify each email based on the users’ security policies to ensure they’re allowed to send the particular email. What’s more, these solutions have security restrictions like “encrypt email” or “do not forward”.

Document Security

Any document that leaves the company verifies whether user authorization. You can easily grant or revoke document access after it has left the company. Furthermore, you’ll also be able to track sensitive documents after they leave, hence a more accountable approach.

The Bottom Line

Given the complexity and aggressiveness of advanced cyber threats, you must up your game when it comes to protecting your business and sensitive documents. As such, you shouldn’t just rely on antivirus, firewall, and passwords for the job.

A converged cybersecurity approach helps you address the available risks in three areas across your company’s operations, infrastructure, and specific events. These are process, people, and physical risks. Technological configuration determines modern solutions, hence, a more practical approach to addressing the growing number of cyber threats.

CTECH Consulting Group ensures you leverage the most advanced collaborative tools to improve your Calgary business. As leading experts, we understand that outdated protection approaches are no longer viable and can help you get the most of collaborative cybersecurity strategies.

To learn more, explore our IT solutions or schedule your free IT consultation with us today.

Written by Carl Fransen

posted on March 28, 2021

Carl Fransen

My passion is to make my mark on the world in a positive and lasting way. I want to set an example for my son that his father can compete with integrity in today’s world, be very successful, and leave the world a better place for him.

Combining my technical/business-based education with a long career steadily progressing up the corporate ladder, I decided to build a company that held true to my values. So, I founded and designed the next generation of IT support firm: CTECH Consulting Group Inc. We are a completely automated, cloud-based IT company designed to compete against any other IT firm without the overhead. We promote a lifestyle to all our staff where they can work anywhere, at any time, access any information on any device that is relevant to their job, and collaborate with anyone they want to.