ers in ninja outfits or hoodies at their computers, most infiltrations are not produced by Pixar. Oftentimes, the risk comes about as the result of a trusted staffer or other accepted party making a poor, uninformed or even malicious decision. Sometimes, this can even be dictated by poorly laid out organizational policy that is either too heavy handed or lax. According to Wootton, the key is balance. “This is the trend: collaboration security,” he argued. “We’re working very hard to lock down our environments. With everybody moving to the cloud, customers are just starting to realize the problem with being too wide open. On the opposite side, we’ve got customers who locked the doors and barricaded it. There’s a tremendous pressure to find balance. There’s also a tremendous opportunity to get a little more control while not being oppressive.” AvePoint’s Beal agreed. “There’s always been this balance between empowering and having agility versus the other side: having security,” he said. “There doesn’t need to be a trade-off. You can have all of it, even security and governance. Microsoft alone had 145 million daily active users moved to the cloud last year without due diligence. In the U.K., meanwhile, a recent study showed that 75 percent of organizations employing Teams did so without proper governance. We need to make sure that these environments are backed up but buttoned up.” Obviously, the ultimate implications of an ill-conceived or non-existent collaboration security strategy can vary. For most, it tends to come down to cost and one’s ability to prevent the organization from being defrauded in any way. While burdensome, however, the financial aspect is just one of many worries that should cross a decision-maker’s mind. “For the public sector, ending up on CNN in a bad light, that’s a concern,” laughed Valme. “There are really two ‘biggest’ risks that I see, though. One is the actual loss of IP, from the business perspective or even internal users. If leaks are not secured, there’s an immediate risk of loss. The second risk is actually the loss of confidence. Once you lose the confidence of your customers, it makes it very difficult to overcome.” Such ramifications, though, only drill home the idea that all organization’s need a definitive, proactive and smart policy. After all, collaboration security allows us to do many things, and, when properly planned and administered, affords companies a certain peace of mind. “Collaboration security allows us to be able to share data,” said Wootton. “It allows us to share information in a way that has more control. It allows us to collaborate with confidence and control, and provides us with necessary reporting on the back end” to prevent future infiltrations. o 28 THE CHANNEL MANAGER’S PLAYBOOK
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