How To Share Files With Your Team While Working Remotely

Updated on March 15, 2024.

The best and most secure way to share files with your team while working from home is by using a password manager. A password manager ensures that when employees are sharing files with their team members, they’re always encrypted. Encryption prevents unauthorized individuals from being able to read the data if it were intercepted. Using a password manager to share files also makes it easier for IT administrators to have full visibility into what files are being shared and with whom. 

Continue reading to learn ways team members should avoid sharing files and how a password manager solution enables secure file sharing. 

3 Ways Not To Share Files With Your Team While Working From Home

Three ways you shouldn’t be sharing files with your team remotely are through email, messaging apps and consumer-grade file-sharing solutions.

1. Email

Emailing files back and forth is both insecure and inefficient. Cybercriminals can intercept unencrypted emails in transit. Additionally, without a centralized place to store files, employees can misplace them, and updated versions of files can get mixed up with drafts and old versions.

2. Messaging apps

Messaging apps used in the workplace, such as Slack and Teams, are also unencrypted, meaning they can be read if intercepted in transit. This places shared files at risk of being stolen or modified as they’re being sent. Not only that but if these messaging apps experience a data breach, cybercriminals can potentially steal employee login credentials and use them to log in to an employee’s account. If that employee has been using their work messaging app to share files, a cybercriminal would be able to easily access them. 

3. Consumer-grade file-sharing solutions

Consumer-grade file storage and sharing services such as iCloud and Dropbox are designed for personal use, not businesses. They lack the security and compliance controls that organizations need, including Identity and Access Management (IAM), Role-Based Access Control (RBAC), shared team folders, e-discovery tools and file encryption. Many consumer-grade services store files as plain, unencrypted text – this means if a cybercriminal breaches the file-sharing service, they can access any confidential files stored there.

The Most Secure Way To Share Files With Your Remote Team

The most secure way to share files with your remote team is by using a zero-knowledge, cloud-based solution like a password manager. Business password managers not only aid organizations in securely storing and managing employee passwords, but they also come with secure file storing and sharing capabilities. This way, organizations can ensure that files are being stored securely and shared in a manner that doesn’t place those files at risk of getting into the wrong hands.

It’s important that the password manager your organization chooses to invest in uses zero-knowledge encryption. Zero-knowledge encryption is one of the safest ways to store sensitive data. When a software platform is zero knowledge, it means that a user’s data is encrypted and decrypted at the device level and not in the company’s servers or the cloud. The only way to decrypt stored data is with a decryption key (usually a password) that only the user knows. When sharing data using a zero-knowledge platform, that data is encrypted while it’s being sent with Transport Layer Security (TLS) to prevent Man-in-the-Middle (MITM) attacks.

File Sharing Best Practices 

Here are a few file-sharing best practices that every organization should follow.

Create shared team folders for access control

Shared team folders make it easier for IT administrators to define both folder and file access permissions based on department and job role. They also make it easier for employees to quickly access critical paperwork when they need it.

Develop standard folder permissions

Develop a standard group of permissions to be applied to shared team folders, and keep them as simple as possible. While it may be possible to create dozens of different user roles, a simpler permissions structure will be just as secure, and it will be a lot easier to manage, which makes it less likely that user access will be misconfigured.

Train your employees

The proper procedures for secure file sharing should be part of your organization’s employee cybersecurity training. Make sure your employees understand the different data types they’ll be handling as part of their everyday work, the risks associated with mishandling it, and what can and cannot be shared with both coworkers and external parties. Once you’ve invested in a secure file-sharing platform, you need to train your employees on how to use it – and ensure that they actually are using it.

Securely Share Files With Your Remote Team Using Keeper®

Hybrid and remote work has increased an organization’s attack surface, making it important that solutions be implemented to mitigate the risk of data breaches. Collaboration while working remotely is necessary and oftentimes this collaboration involves having to share files with different members of your team; however, this poses a risk of files being shared through insecure methods. A business password manager like Keeper can protect your organization by enabling secure file sharing while also making your remote teams more productive.

To see how Keeper’s business password manager can benefit and secure your organization, start a 14-day business trial today.