Tag: secure email

Corporate users are used to sharing content via email but this reduces corporate security. e-Share provides superior email security, with a variety of options for securing emails, allowing enterprise organizations to provide the best balance between productivity and security. Read our blog posts about secure email.

Top 5 Reasons External File Sharing is Difficult and What To Do About It

Sharing files with external parties is fraught with a mix of uncertainty, risk and complexity, for both the individual and the organization. This is especially so when the files to be shared:

contain regulated data,
are many in number and/or size,
require modification by the external party,
are created within and shared from internal collaboration systems (e.g., Teams), or
are sent to clients, for whom you want the best possible experience.

Under these circumstances users are struggling, IT is burdened and/or information security intervenes. But this does not have to be. There are steps you can take to improve the productivity of your file sharing and content collaboration with external parties, while not compromising on data security.

Here are the Top 5 issues we see users and organizations confronting, and the steps they’ve taken to eliminate them.

1. Users have to get IT involved to move large/bulk files

With email being a non-option for most (more on this later), users turn to IT for help, often by opening a ticket with the unhappy expectation of a several days turnaround while IT sets up an SFTP folder/account, creates a SharePoint site, or takes some other action.

The alternative is to provide a self-service file sharing capability, preferably one that allows the user to share files without the need to copy files into a new environment. For example, if the user’s files are already in OneDrive, SharePoint or Teams, allow them to share files from these locations. If there are missing security controls for you to allow this, consider providing these controls via e-Share.

2. Users have too many tools to choose from

This embarrassment of riches leaves users confused, IT struggling to maintain overlapping capabilities, and security burdened with maintaining multiple DLP policies.

The solution is to adopt a single platform for external file sharing that allows users to share files using the tools and workflows they are already familiar with. For organizations that have deployed O365, this is Teams, SharePoint Online, OneDrive, Outlook and Office Apps. The common platform allows the organization to define a uniform set of sharing policies, no matter how files are shared. It also creates a single audit log for compliance reporting, risk assessment and investigations. e-Share can be that single platform, leveraging the strengths of O365 and providing the controls, branding and ease-of-use features that organizations require.

3. Your O365-equipped organization does not allow file sharing via Teams, SharePoint and/or OneDrive.

Your users want to share files using the applications and workflows they are already using, but you are forcing them to seek other tools and, in most all cases, copy the shared files into those tools, manage file updates and changes between two copies and master yet-another application for file sharing.

The solution of course is to allow your users to stay within Teams, Outlook and Office Apps, and for your files to stay within SharePoint Online and OneDrive…all while securely sharing files externally. This is precisely what e-Share allows.

4. It is difficult to manage file versions and often impossible to co-author documents

By forcing your users to store and share files outside of O365 you are preventing them from benefitting from the modern collaboration it makes possible. For example, they are left exchanging multiple copies of contract, hoping that redlines are not conflicting and using ‘merge and compare’ to avoid a catastrophe. That’s the stuff of the last decade, not this one.

The best way to avoid version confusion and truly co-author documents is to provide recipients a link to shared files, not the file itself. This modern collaboration capability is easy with e-Share, which natively integrates with Office Online and uses OneDrive and SharePoint Online to store all shared files.

5. Email is surprisingly unpredictable and inflexible

Past experience prompts many questions when sharing files as an email attachment. Is the file size too large? Will a secure mail system unexpectedly kick in and create a bad experience for my customer? Will I run afoul of a compliance policy? Can I reliably recall an email sent to the wrong person? At the root of these questions is the organization’s inflexible approach to email, especially in the presence of regulated data. Email works, until it doesn’t.

Taking the mystery out of email can be achieved through well communicated security policies, DLP rules that offer more than allow or deny as outcomes, and a modern approach to secure email that provides a great recipient user experience. e-Share can help you realize the latter two, with the ability independently protect the body and attachments of an email and optionally replace all email attachments with links.

Taken together, the steps outlined here allow organizations to take the pain away from their external file sharing, enabling users to more easily, confidently and securely share files and collaborate with external parties to drive better business outcomes.

Top 5 Reasons to Replace All Email Attachments with Links

Email is the collaboration and file sharing tool of choice for most of us for many reasons. For some it is a muscle-memory thing. It is how we collaborated before Skype, Yammer and Teams emerged. Email has the advantage of ubiquity and virtually always working. When you hit Send you have great confidence that the recipient will quickly receive your message with zero friction.

All of this came to mind upon reading a Linkedin post from an astute industry colleague, which stated that:

“Behind every problem at this company is a spreadsheet. In an email.”

I suspect this problem resonates with most of us, but our attention may mistakenly (IMHO) focus on email being an inadequate method to share a sensitive file. But the underlying issue is that in almost all cases, attachments result in data being given away forever. But this does not have to be the case as the attachment can be replaced with a link to the file. Here are the Top 5 reasons to do so.

Links can be expired
An emerging best practice is to have a default link expiration duration, for example 60 days. Long enough to meet the business need in sharing the file in the first place. And if requesting and approving an extension is easy (as it is with e-Share), there is virtually no impact on the sender or the recipient.
And if you have sent an email in error (have you ever succeeded in recalling an email?), or you have terminated a business relationship, or have reason to believe a recipient’s mail server has been compromised, you can immediately expire any/all attachment links.
Links allow rights management
Perhaps attachments should be available for viewing only, with no download. Perhaps downloaded attachments should be dynamically watermarked. And perhaps the sharing of an attachment with a co-worker is okay, but sharing outside of the recipient’s organization requires the sender’s approval.
Attachments are not sitting in the recipients email system
Attachment links allow you to keep your shared files safely tucked away in your cloud file storage (e.g., the sender’s OneDrive). The recipient can view an attachment at any time, without having the file in their mail system, accruing risk by the day, long after the business need in sharing the file has been met.
80% of recipients do not need a local copy of the file
Even when the recipient has the right to download an attachment, 80% of recipients will not. They prefer to preview the file, perhaps to approve it or to determine what action is needed. Knowing they have access to the file at some later point is good enough for 80% of recipients. Attaching a file in the absence of a link is grossly oversharing, adding no business value and accumulating risk.
Links enable modern collaboration
Platforms like Microsoft 365 (formerly Office 365) allow for online editing, co-authoring and redlining of shared content, but not if that content is shared as an attachment. Links make modern collaboration possible, as does e-Share’s native integration with Microsoft Office Online.
Bonus Reason: Links eliminate version confusion
Links ensure all parties are working from the same version of a shared file. No longer are drafts of contracts being merged and compared. And you can update an attachment link even after you hit the send button.

With attachments links, email can remain your user’s preferred method for for initiating their collaboration and file sharing while providing the organization the control it needs over shared files.

You can read here how a leading Health Insurer has implemented attachment links to protect PHI and improve the customer experience. And you can see the sender and recipient experience, including modern collaboration around attachments, in our virtual demo.

Better yet, schedule a demo with us to learn more and discuss use cases of specific interest to your organization.

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Secure Mail Gateway: Simple & Reliable

What comes to mind when you think of Secure Mail? A rare message from your bank, possibly lost in a spam filter? A confusing registration process?

Maybe you think of how you always forget your password.

The reality is that secure portals expire after 30 days and only intended to facilitate deliver of data to the large institution – bank, regulator, insurance company, etc. Few people worry about the experience. Because, they know the burden is on the customer to complete the transaction. Support call volume is a side-effect of having a lot of business… it’s not an urgent problem, is it?

It is. And it doesn’t have to be like this.

e-Share Secure Mail Gateway (SMG) is a next-generation take on a venerable communication staple. Simply put, it’s the first enterprise-class product that allows you to share sensitive information in a fully compliant and controlled way without compromising on the user experience, creating a burden for your organization’s support staff, or motivating people to share in a non-compliant way.

Senders and recipients will love it.

For starters, there’s no painful web portal for senders to use. They just send an email right from their current system, including Microsoft Outlook, Office 365 and G Suite – without installing any software or plug-ins. When Secure Mail Gateway receives this message from your organization’s email system, it automatically manages the collaboration from there on your behalf, in full and automatic compliance with your organizational policies.

Recipients are invited to the e-Share portal, which is fully re-branded with your company logo, colors, text and sub-domain (“sharedby.yourcompany.com”). Recipients will feel good about that, instantly realize that the experience is authentic. They’ll trust enough to collaborate without concern. All content is protected at rest and in motion using e-Share’s patented, state-of-the-art key management and industry standard, military grade encryption algorithms.

Email administrators will love our message tracking console, which allows full audit and forensic examination of each secure mail message, along with the usual reporting and metrics. The solution supports all existing e-Discovery solutions as well.

Secure Mail Gateway can also support non-regulated use cases in style, offering support for use of PIN codes or SmartURLs instead of full registration.

Register for a demo to see SMG in action.

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e-Share Announces General Availability of our Next-Generation Secure Mail Gateway (SMG)

e-Share is delighted to announce general availability of our Secure Mail Gateway (SMG) product! You may wish to download the product datasheet. Please register for a demo to check it out and see what it can do for your organization.

SMG is a next-generation take on an venerable communication staple. Simply put, it’s the first enterprise-class product that allows you to share sensitive information in a fully compliant and controlled way without compromising on the user experience, creating an burden for your organization’s support staff or motivating people to share in a non-compliant way.

Senders and recipients will love it. And that’s a big shift.

Senders create secure email right from their current system, including Microsoft Outlook, Office 365 and G Suite – without installing any software or plug-ins. When Secure Mail Gateway receives this message from your organizations email system, it automatically manages the collaboration from there on your behalf, in full and automatic compliance with your organizational policies.

Recipients are invited to the e-Share portal, which is fully re-branded with your company logo, colors, text and sub-domain (“sharedby.yourcompany.com”). Recipients will feel good about that, instantly realize that the experience is authentic. They’ll trust enough to collaborate without concern. All content is protected at rest and in motion using e-Share’s patented, state-of-the-art key management and industry standard, military grade encryption algorithms.

Secure Mail Gateway can also support non-regulated use cases in style… offering support for use of PIN codes or SmartURLs instead of full registration.

Contact us for a demo to learn more anytime.

email security secure email