5 Ways Secure Texting Can Protect Your Business and Employees

It’s a big mean green world out there, and in any place, the flow of money is directly related to the data a business or its employees have access to and exchange – is going to be data that others want.

HACKERS, THIEVES, AND LAWYERS

In today’s cyber world, businesses need to protect their data and their employees’ data from hackers, thieves, and lawyers. Hackers are trying to break in and take, copy or implant data in networks. Thieves are trying to want mobile devices in order to steal the data off them, and well, lawyers, we all know about lawyers, they’re looking for violators of the nation’s data security and privacy laws.

There are many forms of protection that CIOs can use to help secure their networks, and the best CIOs know that having several forms of protection offer the most security. Secure messaging is one of the most important forms of security since its not only focused on the network but more importantly, the mobile devices that are connected to the network.

Here are five ways that secure texting can protect your business and employees from hackers, thieves, and lawyers.

#1 – Protect Strategic Business Information

One of the business’s most important assets is its strategic business information. This can be anything from quarterly sales reports, computer access codes, product development ideas or expense reports. What most people don’t realize, is that something like the photo you took with your phone of VP Bob standing on the copy machine waving his toupee over his head after throwing down five Martinis during happy hour is also strategic business information. If your phone is lost or hacked, that phone could be used for blackmail or could damage the company if released to the public.

Strategic business information can include such a wide range of information that businesses now need to think in terms of protecting all information that is transmitted or stored. This is especially true with any business information that is sent, received, or stored on workers’ mobile devices. VP Bob might have been funny that day, but he could cost people their jobs if his antics got out to the public.

#2 – Speed Critical Communication

Ever have one of those days when you open your email, and the number of unread emails is so large that you start hyperventilating and you look around for an open window to jump out of?

Email is a critical communication channel, but with 292 billion emails sent every day, people are bound to get behind in reading and responding to emails.

Companies are finding that staff needs a priority communication channel, and messaging has become that default channel. People tend to respond quickly to messages than to email. Secure messaging response rates are even higher then unsecured messaging response rates, and as a result enterprise is using secure messaging as one of its quick response communication channels.

#3 – HIPAA and SOX Compliance

Financial, government, and healthcare-related businesses have specific legal compliance requirements for data security, and many other businesses in other fields also have legal data security requirements. The most common are the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) and Sarbanes–Oxley Act (SOX) of 2002.

HIPAA and SOX data security requirements are in place to protect the business’ data, or the person’s data and the confidentiality of that data. Secure messaging can meet the legal requirement of that data protection, and in the case of some secure messaging apps such as TigerConnect Clinical Collaboration Platform – Standard, are HIPAA and SOX compliant. Such HIPAA and/or SOX compliant messaging allows a business to get the benefits of secure messaging, and meet the legal compliance requirements for data security, thus protecting their employees, clients, customers and profit margin from data loss and the legal penalties and ramifications of a HIPAA or SOX compliance breach.

#4 – BYOD Security

It has been written, that if you were to ask a CIO of a company which he would rather do: a) allow personal mobile devices on their secure network, or b) jump into a pool of boiling sulfuric acid – many would pick the latter.

The reason is that the idea of allowing personal mobile devices on their secure network (also known as Bring Your Own Device – BYOD), is that it adds a lot of potential security risks to a network, and makes a CIO difficult job even harder. Secure messaging offers a good solution because secure messaging protects the data and information that is sent via the network to mobile devices. It does this with features such as encryption, auto-deletion of messages after a set time period and remote wipe capabilities, which offer the highest level of data security for the network and the device.

#5 – Employee Legal Protection

The question of who owns the data, information, and work that an employee does from their personal mobile device, is a question that is becoming a larger concern every day for both CIOs and employees. It is becoming more common to hear of stories of employees getting sued, fired, or both; because they lost their phone that was filled with company data.

By using secured messaging as the means to transfer information and files, not only is the company’s data protected, but the employee is also protected because the data is secured and therefore protecting the employee from a lot of legal exposure in the event of a lost or stolen device.

 

Download The 6 Keys to Successful Communication at Work to learn more about the benefits of secure texting.