RSMUS.comYou have a file that you need to send to a co-worker, or a client, but every time you click send it comes back as, “message undeliverable.” You’ve double-checked the address and then you notice the issue – your attachment is just 1 Mb bigger than what your local IT team allows to be sent via email. But you really need the person to review it tonight, so you start scrambling—you could put it on a thumb drive and drive it over, but they’re in another building across town. Oh wait, didn’t you set up a Dropbox account last month because someone told you how much they used it? You pop on over to the site, sign in, and then upload the file and send the link, and you’re done. Problem solved. Or is it?
Whether or not you like or dislike “the cloud,” chances are that you’ve used Dropbox (or its competitors, like Box or Google Drive) to share a work file or two in a pinch. Or, they may be your company’s preferred solution for storage and sharing of files. The utility of the service is easy to understand, and they make it simple to get started with a new account.
But what about security? Can you quickly and easily tell who has access to the files, and exactly who has been accessing them and when? Even worse, does everyone on your team/in your office/within the entire company share a single username and password for your Dropbox account?
As with all things, simplicity comes at a price. The most common and depressing thing I see is when a couple people in the organization start using Dropbox, then a few more find out about it, and then a bunch of people start using it, and the file organization that started with just a couple folders is now a massive labyrinth of duplicate filenames and folders with names like “My Stuff,” with no organization structure or oversight.
The good news is that there is an alternative, and you might already own it, SharePoint. True, it might not be as easy to get started as with Dropbox, and it sometimes has a bit of a learning curve. But, with its built-in search, ability to organize files beyond just filename or the name of the folder they’re sitting in, and advanced security management and audit features, it delivers on a lot of the things that people who have used Dropbox or Box start to notice and really wish they had known before they got started with their accounts.
At RSM, we have helped teams and organizations weigh the benefits vs. the risks of several leading document storage solutions, and we even have the tools to help migrate from one to the other if need be. To find out more about this or other ways that RSM can assist you with your SharePoint needs, contact RSM’s technology consulting professionals at 800.274.3978 or email us.
