Now, more than ever, enterprises recognize the positive impact of remote workers on the business and the value of secure collaboration technology to connect them, no matter their location, on any device.
Indeed, according to a recent, eye-opening study by Upwork, more than 63% of companies globally now employ remote workers, and over 48% regularly hire independent contractors, many of them on-demand. As a result of these more agile team structures, modern offices have become temporary anchor points for specialized, project-based services.
The challenge for CIOs: For CIOs, the challenge is how to deliver reliable, collaborative experiences consistently across these dispersed teams without sacrificing the organization’s security.
Secure collaboration balances risks and rewards
Modern corporations have discovered an agile workforce isn’t just a trend designed to keep today’s mobile, digitally connected employees engaged and happy, but a strategy that makes good business sense.
A distributed workforce can tackle project tasks around the clock, and the organization can benefit from talented people living in locations outside commuting distance to corporate headquarters or branch offices. Also, many of today’s flexible meeting rooms, offices, and co-working spaces provide an environment conducive to secure collaboration technology.
Still, many companies have not embraced the implementation of universal collaboration tools, risking security, and often struggling to keep their widely distributed teams aligned and on target with corporate initiatives. Without access to secure, virtual meeting spaces—integrating voice, messaging, video, and content sharing—suboptimal user experiences are common, with valuable meeting time wasted on technology setup or addressing issues with seemingly simple, collaborative functionality.
As a result, companies are collecting a variety of different collaboration and communications tools downloaded by their employees.
Although these apps give distributed workers the ability to share content and gather feedback needed to keep the momentum after a meeting, the sheer number of apps creates fragmentation. Content, contacts, and conversations get distributed across these various apps, and information either gets lost or becomes difficult to track down—hurdles CIOs and executive teams understand can slow operations and stall innovation.
Balancing security risks with business needs for online collaboration tools
To keep security risks to a minimum, enterprises must begin to reign in and consolidate the numerous collaboration tools used by different teams throughout the organization.
Discover which security threats are most often identified.
Focus on security makes Cisco Webex a trusted collaboration platform
Cisco Webex® is a proven suite of applications enabling today’s global employees, virtual teams, and remote employees to work side-by-side to achieve objectives, as if in the same room. The security features built into Cisco Webex applications make it a trusted and secure collaboration solution for corporations, institutions, and government agencies worldwide.
Learn more: Get more done with Cisco Webex
CBTS, a Cisco Webex Master Service Provider
Why hire a technology partner to manage implementation and ongoing support and maintenance of your collaboration solution? Because in-house teams working diligently to meet business goals for encouraging innovation through digital collaboration shouldn’t be burdened with ever-changing security and compliance responsibilities.
With CBTS as your technology partner, IT leaders can integrate new collaboration functionality into the corporate environment while continually addressing security concerns, no matter the location of distributed team members.
Schedule a collaboration security assessment today.
Learn more: Top goals of IT executives implementing secure collaboration technology