By now most of the IT world understands the issues with uncontrolled file sharing, and more than one Novell blog post has discussed those problems. Most organizations would like their employees to avoid using free, unsecure applications such as cloud file sharing. And yet most people are using those apps anyway. According to Net-Security.org, 88 percent of employees in the legal industry use free file sharing, while only 33 percent are authorized to do so. In the financial industry, 78 percent use such apps and only 35 percent are authorized.

You can’t simply shut-down file sharing. Nor can you offload it to email, where it will eventually clog your email servers. According to Osterman Research, more than one-half of organizations report serious email problems that are directly attributable to its use as a file transport mechanism.

Offering a sanctioned corporate option is likely the best way to control the file sharing in your organization. But how do you convince executives, and, once that’s done, get all your users in line? You need muscle. The Novell client management can be that muscle.

Defining the problem

Using Novell ZENworks Asset Management, your IT administrators can easily identify unauthorized applications running on any device with a ZENworks agent. That means that you can find out, without users even knowing you’re looking, if any of them are using unsanctioned file sharing applications.



An image showing some of the various reports available in ZENworks Asset Management, including multiple reports on the software installed on managed devices.

Your first use for this data might be to present it to executives. Executives are surely aware of the dangers of data breaches. What they may not realize is just how their users’ actions are making them susceptible to breaches. By demonstrating how many individuals are sharing work files without control, you can impress upon execs that this is a problem they have to address.

Enforcing the solution

So your organization decides to bring in a more secure file sharing alternative, such as Novell Filr. You roll Filr out to every device and show users how to use it. But do they? Or do they sneak back to their old habits?

One option is to use ZENworks Endpoint Security Management to block users from downloading additional file sharing apps. You can also rely on ZENworks Asset Management, as before, to get a comprehensive list of those users working around your sanctioned option. You can then use that list and take immediate action to protect the security of your business.

Help them work safe

The first step to keeping your data safe is always hiring trustworthy employees. But even the best employees can easily go astray when file sharing is so common and easy to do incorrectly. Give them a sanctioned file sharing option and, when they do go astray, make sure you have the knowledge you need to nudge them back on course.

Thanks for reading!