Why employees of large companies use “left” software for professional communication and what to do about it

Large companies have certain features that influence how internal and external communications and information exchange are built within such organizations.

First, there are a lot of people working in them who are engaged in a very large number of projects, which implies a very intensive information interaction both within departments and between departments.
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Secondly, their employees cannot physically be familiar with all their colleagues, and they are often distributed throughout the country (or across the globe, as in the case of global mega-corporations), which complicates communication tasks.

Thirdly, each of them has a dedicated IT department (or even several such departments), whose specialists are responsible for the work of the corporate infrastructure and data integrity. These same specialists are usually involved in the implementation of third-party products that were purchased by the company for their needs.

Typically, this implementation system works quite well, but it is often in the organization of communications that a failure occurs - the systems recommended for the discussion of projects and other professional interaction recommended by the IT department are inconvenient. As a result, corporate employees sabotage their use, using more convenient alternative products within their departments without the consent of the IT department doing this (and often even without his knowledge at all).

This phenomenon is described with the help of a special term “shadow technologies” (“shadow IT” in English) - software products and hardware that are used in the company's life, but not officially approved. The risks of leakage, fragmentation, loss, distortion and theft of information resulting from the use of shadow technologies for professional communication are extremely high.

There are two main methods (none of which can be called successful), with the help of which companies usually solved the problem of using shadow technologies in internal communications: tightening the screws and closing their eyes.

Way to tighten the screws

The first method of combating employees' amateur performance in the choice of tools for professional communication is tough restraining measures. Obviously, this is a road to nowhere - bans not only demotivate employees (which may, for example, lead to the loss of high-quality specialists), but also physically reduce their productivity.

People use unauthorized (including “consumer”) systems for professional communication in order to make it easier for them to solve routine tasks. If they are denied access to convenient tools, workers either will spend efforts to bypass restrictions (for example, use cellular communication instead of corporate network, or use various tunnels that allow launching any applications within the corporate computer network, including those with known security holes) , or simply put up with an inefficient approved system. In any case, the business is inevitably damaged.

Method number two: the ostrich on the beach

An alternative to the corporate ban policy described above is that the IT department ignores the dangers associated with shadow communication technologies. This approach often uses a weak awareness of heads of organizations in the protection of intellectual property and data security.

There are examples when, after moving to competing firms, former corporate employees continued to maintain access to shadow communication technologies in their old organizations (and, accordingly, to fresh - and often secret - corporate information).

Usually, the fragility of the system, where the loss of one laptop or smartphone can bring down a huge project, along with all the investment of labor, time and money in it, is very clearly proved by practice.

Method number three: "We will go another way"

The sad situation for all participants with the use of shadow communication technologies has begun to change for the better over the past few years.

The initial contradiction can be described as follows: on the one hand, most of the products designed to solve the problems of interaction within large organizations are not very convenient (for example, let us recall this fierce criticism of the Yammer system); On the other hand, any employee of the company in everyday life can use a dozen of similar “consumer” services that are much more convenient, reliable, and faster (Skype and WhatsApp come to mind first). In such a situation, it is rather difficult to expect enthusiasm from employees forced to use uncomfortable (but allowed by the corporation) software.

The obvious solution to this contradiction is to make funds for corporate communications as convenient as consumer services, but with all the advantages of corporate control over them retained. Technological progress has finally translated this task into the category of solved problems. Massively, like mushrooms in a season, more and more convenient tools appear that are specially designed for use in professional life (for example, instant messengers for teamwork, which we talked about in the past topic ).

Cloud as a final decision

The unifying attribute of the mentioned tools of the new generation is their cloud character. It was the cloud technology that made a breakthrough in resolving the sore controversy.

The trend to move corporate services to the "cloud" is undeniable - new technologies allow businesses to get better results and pay less money for it. Accordingly, those companies that understand the benefits of using cloud products gain competitive advantages over competitors.

Those who cannot overcome distrust of such tools will suffer losses and lose to more open companies. Deploying your own chat for teamwork on the internal server or using a third-party product will never be compared in efficiency with the cloud service - the quality of the tool, the availability of updates and usability will always be lower than in the cloud.

Next step: Kato Enterprise

Despite the fact that e-mail is the de facto standard for corporate communications, as a tool for internal communication, it loses to specialized tools, including instant messengers for team work, such as Slack and HipChat. These tools, however, are not suitable for everyone and not in any situation.

The main disadvantage of the popular services of the new generation is that they are not designed for big companies, but for relatively modest startups and individual teams within organizations that are relatively modest in size and complexity. As a rule, they are still not intended to be used in the context of a strict information security policy. The issues of data access and ownership of information often remain without discussion and resolution.

These problems are solved in the corporate version of our product, called Kato Enterprise - thanks to integration with cloud-based identity management services (see this Wikipedia article on Single sign-on ) Okta and OneLogin , corporate users will be able to log in to Kato's messenger using Active Directory, Google Apps, or LDAP.



SSO services (examples - Okta and OneLogin) allow companies to work with cloud products without having to create separate accounts for them - you can “log in” to a conditional Dropbox using an account in the SSO service (which can be linked to the same Active Directory ). In this case, it is possible not only to login to the conditional Dropbox for the domain account, but also to obtain in the conditional Dropbox-service the rights corresponding to the rights of this particular user on the corporate network, registered in the SSO service (the so-called “provisioning”).

SSO services, in addition, make it easy to merge and share company directories. For example, if one company using Okta purchases another using a directory (Active Directory, Google Apps, LDAP), then the Okta directory of the second company listing its employees will almost automatically appear in the Okta directory of the first company.

The link between Kato and SSO services allows you to create commands in the messenger based on the structure of the company, as reflected in its directory.

For example, groups in Active Directory, Google Apps or LDAP, describing the accounting or sales department, are displayed as separate commands in Kato - this is a unique opportunity among instant messengers. In addition, the messenger will be present and a common “umbrella” team, uniting all employees of the company.

The Kato Entreprise version is currently in beta testing. After testing is complete, really large companies with tens of thousands of employees will be able to use the Kato Enterprise version.

“Why not on our server?”

One of the frequent questions in Kato's support rooms is “How can you trust sensitive corporate information to a messenger, over which the company has no control over?”.

Several facts allow us to answer this question:

• Hacking servers that are under the full control of the host companies is a fairly frequent occurrence (recent high-profile examples: Sony, Home Depot, Target, Adobe, eBay)
• The general (and growing) trend towards the transition of corporate services to the cloud is undeniable - cloud technologies allow businesses to get better results at lower costs (even Microsoft, which has earned innumerable billions on installed office software, has already released it, has released Office Online)
• Companies that understand the benefits of using cloud technologies before others gain competitive advantages.
• Systems that ensure the collective security of participants are always cheaper and more reliable than systems that provide a comparable level of security for these participants individually.

PS The topic was updated at 23:05 Moscow time.