Flexible enterprise work policies are a win when it comes to allowing work from anywhere operations. The opposite is true when it comes to work policies that allow employees to use consumer-grade mobile messaging apps for business communications. That’s when flexibility becomes an epic fail for enterprises.

Why?

Because flexibility in the workplace without the right mobile messaging technology can lead to a fragmented collaboration landscape that limits productivity gains and exposes organizations to significant security, privacy and regulatory risks.

According to a 451 Research report, secure collaboration is a top concern for IT decision-makers. The report revealed that three out of four (74%) IT decision-makers are somewhat (52%) or very concerned (22%) about the level of security in the collaboration tools that remote workers are currently using.

As flexible policies allowing the use of unsecure consumer-grade messaging apps increased during the pandemic to support remote working at scale, cyber security threats grew at an even more rapid pace. A survey released in September by Acronis found that 50% of all respondents reported encountering a cyberattack at least once a week in the past three months.

Flexible messaging app usage policies lead to digital sprawl that can dangerously undermine IT control and visibility. Research conducted by cloud security provider Bitglass found that 50% of organizations lack visibility into messaging and file-sharing apps, providing a prime opportunity for data breaches and leakage. The Bitglass research also found that 30% of organizations have no visibility or control over mobile enterprise messaging, a situation that creates considerable opportunity for security to be compromised.

Overlapping communication and collaboration tools can also cause confusion and act as a barrier to efficiency and productivity. According to Gartner’s Eight Steps for Modernizing Employee Communications in the Digital Workplace, “confusing technology options are causing incompatible or conflicting options, which can derail efforts to modernize the employee experience around internal communications.”

While flexibility can be a good thing in organizations, flexible policies that create a digital sprawl of messaging apps in enterprises add up to a losing proposition that compromises security, control and visibility.

NetSfere’s secure, agile mobile messaging service is a winning formula for business communication and collaboration. Avoid the epic fail of flexible messaging app usage policies, find out today how NetSfere can provide the complete mobile messaging experience you want in the single encrypted platform you need.