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Security Guide

SeCurinG CollaBoration

The collaboration tools described in this chapter are usually looking for keywords in your email so they can
do indeed facilitate collaboration: They help groups im- target you with relevant ads. However, given the sensitive
prove the quality of their work while reducing travel and nature of the R&D division, this is a big concern.
other logistical expenses and facilitating international Next comes an equally important concern—data stor-
work. They can enable people to participate in meetings age. Losing even a small number of R&D files could be
asynchronously. However, they also pose security risks— extremely damaging. Internal researchers use a variety
possibly serious ones. of cloud-based data storage services like Google Drive,
What are the security risks you face when collaborating Dropbox, and OneDrive to share documents with each
with others? How important is it to keep your internal commu- other. Even though the connections to these services are
nications confidential? Do you really know your data is secure? secure, none of the documents are encrypted.
It turns out there are many different security risks involved To make matters worse, they access these services us-
when collaborating with others. Here is an example that il- ing a variety of different devices such as desktop PCs, lap-
lustrates just a few of the problems that modern workers face. tops, tablets, and smartphones. What happens if they lose
Imagine you are working for a pharmaceutical company one of these devices? Or, worse, a disgruntled employee
in its development division. The CEO is worried that the com- could “share” a folder full of sensitive R&D documents with
munication and data sharing among the researchers in the an industry competitor. Preventing data loss is at the top of
R&D division might be vulnerable to corporate espionage. your list of possible security concerns.
He tasks you with identifying all of
the possible ways the R&D division
could lose trade secrets. He wants
recommendations on how to make
the company more “secure” by the
end of the day. Oh, and to make
things worse, you’re working for an
international firm with locations in
10 different countries.
You start with the most
obvious—email. You know that
you have a secured connection
(https) to your email server when
you send email. But none of your
emails are encrypted. Your email
could be read by the person man-
aging the corporate email server
(an insider) or by the person man-
aging the destination email server
outside your company. It turns
out that the vast majority of email
sent through large email providers
is routinely read. These readers
Source: Tsung-Lin Wu/Fotolia
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