Security and regulation trends with collaboration tools in 2022 and beyond

Over time, the mass adoption of email changed the way businesses operated forever, accelerating and fundamentally changing the way employees communicated and interacted with each other. Initially, this left companies vulnerable, creating gigabytes of data and records that needed to be monitored, and properly managed to ensure the security of the company’s assets and intellectual property. Over decades, companies developed and implemented governance, retention and records management capabilities to mitigate the risk.

Fast forward to 2022: collaboration platforms such as Slack, Microsoft Teams, Google Workspace and Workplace from Meta exploded into the corporate work environment during the pandemic and have become just as ubiquitous as email, but many IT teams were woefully unprepared to govern and manage the volume and types of data being shared on these platforms safely and unobtrusively.

Unlike email, the interactions that take place on these platforms aren’t straightforward and require stronger monitoring, data management and contextual comprehension to truly understand what kind of information is being communicated, shared and stored. Is your employee sharing login credentials, PII or other sensitive data with a fellow colleague or are they just having a normal work conversation?

Collaboration as a Second Language

We see Collaboration as a Second Language (CSL), creating a new way of communicating in business. Many of us were quickly immersed into the world of collaboration as the pandemic lockdown forced an accelerated implementation of new tools and ways of working. Companies and workers had to quickly, and without rules or guidance, become fluent in new apps and ways of communicating.

At the same time, the confluence of our social world crossing into the corporate collaboration world has introduced a new language, and a complex data set consisting of short-form and fragmented conversations, screenshots and emojis, audio and video are all creating new forms of business records or business content object (BCO) that must be managed and secured properly.

Security and Control Consolidation

With the accelerated deployment and investment by companies in collaboration capabilities, employees have become more adjusted, and are demanding more tools that are relevant, simple to use and help them get the job done. Coupled with easy access across multiple platforms and devices, organizations are seeing an expansion of both standard and non-standard solutions in their environment. This proliferation of tools and content objects is creating what we refer to as large-scale unstructured chaos. The challenge now is for organizations to take control and make sense of the data.

Controls exist across these various solutions; however, many are limited in the breadth and depth that they can manage. Increasing regulatory and compliance pressure to show command over the ecosystem will drive demand for solutions that can monitor and manage multiple collaboration solutions from a single console. Additionally, expense pressures, decreasing technical debt and growing vendor fatigue will continue to plague those who can’t reduce the number of logins and minimize the number of security and compliance tools required to get the job done.

Modern Data Discovery and Management Demands are Leading to Regulatory and Compliance Repositioning

Many of us experienced some level of compliance policy and governance adjustment over the past few years as companies scrambled to activate business continuity plans, implement new technology and pivot to hybrid working models. Information security, compliance teams and regulators have had the opportunity to assess and adjust this new business normal of performing core functions remotely through modified workflow processes. With these adjustments, we see growing expectations to be able to find, manage and control your collaboration data.

Having a centralized ability to provide ubiquitous enterprise search and discovery across the realm of this new BCO data set is table stakes to meet flexing regulatory and organizational demands, and to enable appropriate security and compliance decisions and actions.

Moving forward, we see a more rigorous return of regulatory, audit and compliance expectations spanning across multiple collaboration dimensions; updated operating policies and procedures, implementation of automated monitoring and data management capabilities and enhanced supervision and monitoring competencies. The key here is to strike the right balance for your organization between Compensating Controls and Experience.

Increased Demand for Immediate Automated Moderation and Alerting

Collaboration happens in the moment. The lines between our personal and professional worlds continue to blur; instant action is just a thumb swipe or finger tap away, and the expectation for immediate actions/responses is standard. No one wants to wait days to get an answer, it’s unacceptable in all aspects of our lives. Fast actions and decision-making depend on seeing immediate results at scale.

Being always on and able to enforce your compliance, information security and social policies across all conversations and data movement is more crucial than ever. The expectation that companies are constantly monitoring, assessing, and alerting is table stakes, and they must be able to demonstrate this capability. Machine learning and AI are playing a key role in boosting your organization's risk posture and improving the way you detect, interpret, alert and take action. Implementing solutions that continually learn and perform at this level and pace is critical to keeping you ahead of the curve, reducing exposure and protecting your company.

These are just some of the security and compliance trends IT teams should be aware of when implementing collaboration tools within your business. While emails are clearly here to stay, businesses are still in the relatively early stages of collaboration tools adoption, and we’ll continue to improve monitoring, compliance and data discovery until the next communication revolution occurs.