3 File Sharing Don’ts You Need to Know
Don’t Let These File Sharing Mistakes Hold Your Business Back!
It’s no secret that file syncing and sharing is an easy and inexpensive way to take your business’s productivity to the next level. File sharing makes it easier and faster to collaborate than ever before, making it possible to hear from more people and rapidly iterate through ideas. But just like anything else, there’s a right way to share files and a wrong way.
Before you hit share, make sure you don’t make any of these common file sharing mistakes:
- Sharing via email or flash drive
- Failing to engage a file sharing service company-wide
- Not managing who has access to what
1. Don’t use outdated file sharing methods like email and flash drives.
Old methods of file sharing– like email and flash drives– have reigned supreme many years, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re your best options. The biggest problem with these methods is that they don’t give you enough control. When you send a file as an email attachment, you don’t get streamlined version control. When you transfer a file via flash drive, anyone with that physical piece of hardware has access to the file.
That’s where cloud-based file sharing services like Dropbox come into play. By giving you control over file versions and file access, they help you keep all of your important files and folders more secure than you could with older file sharing methods like email and flash drive.
2. Don’t leave decisions about file-sharing services up to employees.
Cloud-based file sharing services eliminate a lot of the danger of file sharing, but only if you implement them correctly and with enough visibility. If you haven’t implemented a strong file sharing policy and an individual employee decides to take file sharing into their own hands, the results can be less than ideal.
Single employees are looking for an easy solution to their file-sharing needs and won’t be considering organization-wide file sharing needs. To ensure that your data is only shared via services with adequate control, regulation, and visibility, take that decision out of their hands. Find a service that meets your organization’s needs, and design a file sharing policy to guide how employees use it.
3. Don’t forget to manage file access.
It’s a simple fact of business organization that different people tackle different projects. Your accounting team probably doesn’t need access to your IT department’s internal files. Your marketing department doesn’t need access to the files your web developers are working on.
Controlling who can access what files offers a variety of security benefits. If you give access only to the people who need certain information– especially if it’s confidential or otherwise sensitive– it can prevent that information from accidentally being shared somewhere it shouldn’t be.
Plus, controlling what kind of access different people have to different files– for example, granting view versus edit access– you can ensure that only the people who have the most accurate information are able to make changes.
Today, file sharing is a key part of many business workflows. Before you share your next file, make sure you don’t make these 3 common file sharing mistakes. By cutting these bad habits out of your workflows, you’ll be able to keep your data (and your company!) more secure.