A recent study has found a majority of respondents believe employees in their companies are using unmonitored communications channels, creating heightened security and compliance risks.
According to Theta Lake, the 2022 Modern Communications Compliance and security Report found that 66% of respondents believe employees in their companies are using unmonitored communications channels, posing heightened security and compliance risks to firms.
Up to 67% of respondents said they expect the usage of popular collaboration platforms such as Zoom, Teams, Slack and RingCentral to increase. In addition, employees have shown a growing preference for the tools available through these platforms, with 81% using chat and 63% using video as much or more than email to communicate.
The transfer of files via chat (52%) and the ability to share links in chat or on screen (41%) are still considered the riskiest features for respondents.
Theta Lake also discovered that four out of five respondents from financial services businesses anticipate that there will be increased regulatory expectations to monitor video, while up to 36% from all industries believe video conferencing and webcams create the greatest risks in terms of data privacy and employee misconduct.
For compliance teams utilising legacy archiving solutions, modern communications platforms prove difficult to oversee. Around 85% of organisations experience challenges in retrieving records, while 33% were said to be using significant manual resources to search multiple systems and modes of communication.
Simultaneously, 52% find it difficult to search modern communication channels outside of traditional email methods – increasing exposure to potential fines and sanctions for not being able to provide timely, complete data for investigations, litigation data privacy or other compliance purposes.
Meanwhile, an additional 39% of respondents cited gaps in coverage as a top challenge with their current archiving tools, these findings highlight the growing divide between tools built for email and the need for enhanced archiving capabilities to keep pace in today’s increasingly complex communications environment.
Devin Redmond – CEO of Theta Lake – said, “Collaboration platforms have been integral to business operations over the last three years, and our research indicates that usage isn’t slowing down.
“As businesses chart a path forward, the focus should be on picking the right subset of the most advanced market-leading UC tools like Zoom, Slack, RingCentral, and Cisco Webex for compliance integration, and modernizing compliance with tools like Theta Lake that provide tightly integrated compliance and security coverage for the full feature set of those UC tools. By creating a positive path of least resistance for employees, businesses can increase productivity while compliantly communicating with customers and partners where and how they prefer.”
Theta Lake director of regulatory intelligence Stacey English added, “Modern collaboration tools have become the foundation of the hybrid work environment, making it all the more important for organizations to have complete visibility into the communication channels employees are using.
“The findings are a wake-up call to the growing gap between the collaboration platforms employees prefer and the technology needed to remain in compliance. Our report provides a roadmap for businesses to meet the evolving communication needs and compliance mandates of the hybrid workforce.”
Earlier this year, Theta Lake teamed up with fellow communication security solution Movius to help companies improve compliance with collaboration tools.
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