As many as 96% of legal professionals now access work documents on the go, a report by Workshare has found, but in the absence of an enterprise-grade file sharing alternative, 70% are resorting to unauthorised, free file-sharing services.
The report titled "Workforce Mobilization" is based on more than 5,000 responses from a range of companies across the UK, EMEA, and the US The findings reveal the true extent to which mobile users are increasingly circumventing policies set by firms and using unsanctioned applications to share and collaborate on documents outside the office.
This raises major concerns over the security of legal and client documents and highlights the challenges facing legal firms when it comes to enabling mobility while ensuring data governance and mitigating risk.
Without any audit trial or visibility of what corporate documents and information are being shared and with whom, legal organisations must act quickly to regain control or risk serious breaches of industry regulations. The survey revealed:
70% of legal professionals do not have direct authorisation from their IT department to use consumer file sharing applications.
77% of legal professionals use their personal devices for work, more than any other industry surveyed.
The majority (88%) of these workers also use free file sharing services to collaborate, up 4% from 2012.
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Workshare provides a variety of IT-sanctioned file sharing apps that support mobile sharing, within online document storage, and allow administrators to centrally control and report on sharing behaviour. Additionally, to address concerns around mobile file sharing via email, Workshare has launched a new version of Protect Server to now enable control over files shared via email and webmail on mobile devices. This allows employees to email documents from mobile devices but eliminates the risk of inadvertently sharing sensitive or hidden metadata inside documents.
Anthony Foy, CEO of Workshare, said: "Legal organisations can no longer ignore the increasing use of mobile and tablets by employees working on the move. Instead, they must find ways to meet their needs while also meeting strict regulations surrounding data protection, transparency, and data security.
"We’ve provided secure file sharing methods for the legal sector for more than 14 years and extended this to encompass secure file transfer and all mobile channels, enabling legal firms to strike the balance between users’ demands, client expectations, and their own requirements for compliance and complete data security."
