Now more than ever before there is an increased demand for employees to share and collaborate on documents with people inside and outside of their respective organizations. For this reason, organizations of all shapes and sizes are turning to enterprise file sync and share (EFSS) solutions to provide secure cloud-based file sharing.

A recent survey conducted by AIIM (Association of Information and Image Management) expressed the following key findings related to EFSS solutions.

  • 58 percent of respondents say they are using third-party cloud applications for sharing outside of the corporate network, with 49 percent saying they use FTP sites. Not surprising, but somewhat concerning, is that 85 percent are still using email for this purpose.
  • When asked about standards for cloud-based sharing, 35 percent say they have some level of sanctioned file-sharing standard in place, while 52 percent have no cloud-based sharing standards at all.
  • Unsanctioned file sharing tools are in use by 65 percent of those polled.
  • Lack of insight on what is being shared outside the company is a concern for 60 percent of organizations.
  • Education is a key element in preventing unauthorized sharing for 65 percent of respondents. Monitoring of the user community is a practice for 46 percent.
  • Security is on the minds of 71 percent of respondents, indicating that the use of unique encryption keys is very important.

One thing is for sure, the usage of EFSS solutions will only continue to rise. Organizations that haven’t deployed an enterprise solution will continue to battle with unsanctioned file sharing tools until one is deployed. Email is not a long term solution.

In the market for an EFSS solution? An EFSS solution should have at a minimum, the following four features:

  • The ability to gain insight into how and when a document is shared, viewed and edited.
  • Interact with current systems that are in place to automate sharing and manual copying of documents
  • The ability to revoke and reassign ownership of documents that are shared.
  • Understand exactly where your data is hosted and insure that data is not co-mingled with other organizations data.

We look forward in continuing to monitor the exciting developments related to EFSS solutions.