Secure collaboration starts with the right tech. With cyber-attacks on the rise, it is now more important than ever to ensure the tech you use in your meeting spaces has sufficient security to protect your company’s data. This includes how you log in, where files are stored, and what happens to them when you leave the meeting room. 

Read on to find out how secure collaboration can be made easy and eliminate the risk of cyber-attacks and data theft. Or head to our workplace solutions page for more innovative ways to improve the way we work. 

The introduction of new networking and collaboration technologies has made it easier than ever for organizations of all sizes, from all geographical areas, to work together on a wide range of projects.

In a study of IT professionals by Oblon Industries, 91% of those surveyed agreed that interactive collaboration—where key stakeholders could make informed, immediate decisions from any location—will help companies solve complex business problems and gain a competitive advantage.

In a global workplace where companies are seeking the best people to provide the best value, collaboration often transcends continents and time zones. On any given project, you might be using content developed in North America, while working with developers from Eastern Europe and a marketing team based in South Africa.

But as much as collaboration tools have opened up the world, security experts warn that they’ve also created new opportunities for cyber-criminals looking to steal an organization’s most vital information.

According to Greg Arnette, Director of Data Protection Platform Strategy at Barracuda Networks, “The bad actors of the world are taking advantage of the innovations in cloud and are using artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), and cheap cloud computing to sponsor attacks with these application programming interfaces (APIs).”

Malicious hackers can also infiltrate your collaboration software through accidental authorizations that leak confidential information. In other words, collaboration tools might be putting a huge target on your network. But how can you ensure everyone in your meeting is authorized to access the data being shared? The first step is to ensure you’re using the right collaboration technology.

This article examines the challenges of collaboration security and presents how ViewSonic’s ViewBoard interactive flat panel displays, and myViewBoard software provide state-of-the-industry collaboration tools protected by built-in, enterprise-level security.

Collaborate Now or Get Left Behind

In today’s hyper-connected and increasingly competitive environment, businesses have a choice: They can collaborate, or get left behind.

The time for proprietary solutions and siloed efforts is long gone. Customers no longer have the patience to wait on the progress of dedicated efforts, nor will they be limited to products or solutions that can’t expand at the same pace as their business.

Companies that want to stay relevant and competitive must be ready to work with complementary organizations, whether they are across town or around the world. What’s driving this massive push for collaboration? The increased productivity organizations can realize.

According to McKinsey, “Innovative business collaboration techniques can improve a company’s productivity by 20 to 30%.”

But collaboration also comes with a price—and it can be costly. A single successful cyber-attack can mean losses of thousands to millions of dollars, depending on the size of the company and the severity of the attack.

Data breach costs have risen significantly over the past two years, across company sizes, according to Kaspersky. For an enterprise, the average cost of an incident from March 2017 to February 2018 was $1.23 million—24% higher than losses from 2016 to 2017. For a small or medium-sized business, the average cost of an incident is $120,000—which is $32,000 more than a year ago.

This is why ViewBoard displays and myViewBoard collaboration software offer enterprise-level collaborative security, to help ensure your joint efforts are safe
and successful.

Out of Sight, Out of Mind

Security is not just an issue of long-distance collaboration. Depending on the subject matter and level of confidentiality, valuable data can be compromised from one meeting held in one room.

Consider a long meeting where participants from different organizations are reviewing the risks and benefits of a potential merger. After hours of discussion, the group breaks for a meal and a change of scenery. Everyone leaves the meeting room, and everything that’s been discussed remains on the whiteboard.

What happens if someone who wasn’t in the meeting walks by, with all those ideas on display? Do they take a picture of the whiteboard and share it with others? What if an employee is considering taking a job with a competitor; do they capture the information to use at a new position? The results could be disastrous on a number of fronts, from negatively impacting employee morale to leaking confidential information.

To protect against this, the ViewBoard display includes a time-out feature. After a set amount of no activity, the ViewBoard user is logged off, and the board goes back to white. The work is saved, and authorized users can access it, but for everyone else, the information written on the board disappears without a trace.

Keep Presentations Private

To protect information shared on the ViewBoard display, only authorized users are able to see and access what’s on the interactive display — and only for that particular meeting for which they’ve been authorized.

With the ViewBoard display’s secure viewer access, the session host can sign on and approve a list of authenticated viewers who are assigned a PIN to access the presentation. Once the session is finished, those viewers are automatically logged out of the session, and not able to access another presentation without a new authentication PIN.

Every ViewBoard solution provides multiple authentication options, including a fingerprint reader, password, or QR code, along with a cloud-based single sign-on portal.

Built upon the secure, scalable architecture of the Amazon Web Services Cloud platform, myViewBoard collaboration software mirrors those qualities. Every myViewBoard file utilizes AES-256 encryption and can be locked with a password that’s only accessible to specific, authorized users. As soon as that user logs out of myViewBoard, all files are saved to the default cloud storage provider, and all access and temporary files are deleted.

Authentication That Works Around You

As authentication has become increasingly complex, it has also made multitasking a huge hassle, especially for users having to remember every password or log-in protocol required to access every different platform.

According to a report from LastPass, the average business employee must keep track of 191 passwords, with the average 250 employee company using 47,750 passwords at a given time. It’s no surprise, then, that 81% of confirmed data breaches are caused by passwords. Yet, in spite of this menacing and costly threat, most businesses are still failing to seriously combat this security issue. In fact, 61% of IT executives continue to rely exclusively on employee education to combat the danger posed by passwords.

The report also noted that the average employee starts with 20 credentials in their password vault, and doubles that number after only three months, and that 61% of people use the same or a similar password everywhere, despite knowing that it’s not a secure practice.

ViewSonic provides authenticated access according to your specific requirements. On the software side, myViewBoard uses single sign-on and multifactor authentication to extend that security to the cloud. It even enables authorized employees to use that single-sign-on for a range of different services, such as Google Drive™, Zoom, or even Skype. ViewBoard displays include an Intel® vPro™chip and Trusted Platform Module (TPM) chip that enables data encryption and security management.

Users can also opt for hardware-based token authentication devices, like QR codes or even fingerprint identification, if it makes them feel more secure about logging in. With ViewSonic, the key is to provide the most appropriate level of authentication, while ensuring the process is simple and comfortable for users. The result is authentication where you need it when you need it.

Conclusion

ViewSonic understands the security challenges of collaboration, as well as what makes a great meeting space. It’s why we designed and built ViewBoard displays and myViewBoard collaboration software to provide the advanced collaboration tools and ease of use employees require, along with the advanced security that organizations demand.

Click here to see the full range of capabilities offered by Viewsonic’s ViewBoard, or visit our workplace solutions page for more insights into how technology can be used to increase collaboration, communication, and productivity within the professional workspace.