How can law firms meet security needs while offering accessibility to users?
With the coronavirus pandemic putting document management and access squarely on the map, firms need to keep an eye on how they balance security and access, says Ian Raine, VP product management at iManage.
Protecting knowledge work without impeding knowledge workers’ access is a persistent challenge for security teams given the strict regulatory, legal, and ethical obligations of modern legal professionals who manage regulated, client-secure, or IP-related content.
Law firms need systems, software and workflows that unobtrusively employ the most stringent of security and access controls – but neither an optimistic nor a pessimistic security model will meet the challenge.
So, how can legal businesses meet their users’ needs for broad access to information while maintaining the highest security protocols?
1. Address the challenge of secure remote access
When a global pandemic forced office closures, all businesses needed employees to work and meet with clients and partners safely, remotely and virtually, without delay.
Some met the challenge by accelerating or modernising their long-term security strategies. These organisations implemented comprehensive, cloud-based systems with pervasive, zero-trust security, compliance and governance that works with knowledge workers, not against them.
Those that had laid the groundwork for a move to the cloud – or had already migrated – pivoted quickly to a system where their knowledge workers had secure access to the organisation’s knowledge assets, anywhere, on any device.
2. Choose a system that can guarantee unobtrusive security and accessibility
Security and accessibility underpin the pain points legal professionals share. To overcome adoption resistance and enforce compliance with quickly evolving regulatory changes, security must be unobtrusive yet unassailable.
An effective document management system employs a comprehensive and layered approach to security. From sophisticated access controls to threat detection and differentiated encryption, it enables secure collaboration without erecting barriers to productivity.
3. Simplify remote and mobile work management with a single, integrated platform
A modern document management system like iManage enables law firms to meet the highest security protocols while offering broad accessibility for greater mobility. Zero-trust cloud architecture with delegated access secures critical content, whether working remotely or in the office.
As one of our law firm clients recently fed back to us, the advantages of moving to the cloud have become even more clear since the global pandemic triggered huge changes to working practices, and iManage’s global data centre locations and advanced scaling abilities have ensured that firms’ users, across the UK and internationally, have had a seamless, responsive user experience.
