Nowadays, sending messages and sharing confidential data via email is a major cause of accidental data leaks. So, this article will analyze why email is dangerous for business data exchange.
Email for business data exchange
One of the directions of development of modern enterprises is informatization. The use of modern information technologies (including email) can significantly improve the efficiency of production and management processes. But along with the use of these technologies, the problem of providing comprehensive protection of information that can be classified as confidential arises. Email is used by people all over the world – to send personal letters or work papers. However, not every person thinks that the confidentiality of his information is under threat. After gaining access to someone else’s “box,” attackers can penetrate any application, including online banking, social networks, and other sites.
After analyzing the confidential information processed at the enterprise, incoming and outgoing information flows at the email level, and the state of mail security, we can conclude that a lot of confidential information is processed at the enterprise. It is emailed daily, both internally and externally. Through employee briefings, the security service provides incomplete mail-level protection against phishing, spam, and social engineering. An attacker can implement threats such as spoofing and packet sniffing without difficulty. It can cause financial damage to the enterprise.
Why is an email not reliable enough?
When it comes to a company, in most cases, an internal mail server is used to exchange information. However, due to the setting of certain limits on the size of the transferred files, the sender will have to split his message into several emails in the process of sending an email with multiple attachments. It is inconvenient, takes additional time from the employee, and can significantly affect the interaction process with contractors. In addition, the sender will not be able to receive notification of file download operations by the recipient and confirmation that the recipient downloaded the file.
As a rule, transferred files are stored on the mail server for a long time, which leads to a quick filling of the hard disk with transferred files. And if we talk about a corporate mail server, the same attachment can take up two or more times more disk space.
Digital data room – the best option for sensitive data exchange
Not all data needs to be transferred via email. If you need to share confidential information with a user-defined user, you should not use email but a special encrypted service. In this case, a virtual data room is a good alternative. Such systems are an effective tool for solving the problem of file sharing and satisfy most of the needs of a modern organization.
The data room is based on a universal enterprise-level platform that allows you to automate individual business processes in various industries.
Data room vendors may vary in functionality, but most of them support the following features:
- The ability to build complex multi-level routes for document approval;
- A high degree of user data protection;
- The relative ease of mastering the main components of the system;
- Flexible and customizable document processing processes;
- The ability to track all stages of the movement of any electronic documents.
A data room is a solution that meets most of the security requirements of organizations and allows you to solve several key problems. The scope of this solution is quite wide, ranging from small companies (organization of one or two channels for the transfer of documents by external partners) to large commercial or government structures (organization of the exchange of large files both within the organization itself between employees and with external partners).