As you seek ways to manage your digital documents, cloud file sharing has inevitably come up. Thanks to their huge popularity and some great marketing, many people only think of cloud file sharing services like Dropbox when considering the cloud. Although these are great resources for personal use, cloud file sharing services are not actual document management solutions, and should not be used by your business. Here is what makes Dropbox and its peers different from a cloud-based document management solution:
File sharing services won't manage your documents
Your company regularly produces and manages thousands of documents. Simply jumbling them all together in one large folder would make retrieving documents a nightmare. If you use a cloud file sharing service, however, that's exactly what you are doing.
Cloud file sharing services are designed to act as digital folders that can be accessed anywhere. While this is great for someone who wants to be able to access their vacation photos from anywhere, this poses a problem for your company when your employees need to access, edit or share a document.
When using a file sharing service, you are sharing bandwidth
Dropbox serves nearly half a billion customers. All of these people are constantly using the company's servers to access their personal data. This limits everyone's bandwidth, causing files to be uploaded, downloaded and accessed at a much slower pace.
As an organization that needs to be able to access large volumes of documents instantaneously, this just won't do.
File sharing services are unsecured
Protecting your company's data isn't always easy. People are constantly trying to breach your security in order to steal your valuable data. Using a cloud file sharing service will reduce your ability to protect your company's documents. It's harder to manage document access and controlling who can access your company's documents is critical for protecting them. For example, you may want to revoke a former employee's access to a document. If you use a file sharing service, however, that former employee is likely to retain the ability to access, manage and even copy the document indefinitely.
Document security is limited
Although most cloud file sharing services provide basic data encryption when your files are in transit, your data would still be vulnerable. As a business, you need your documents to be protected on multiple levels at all times. File sharing companies are huge targets for data thieves. Large file sharing companies have a target on their backs. Hackers are constantly bombarding their servers with digital attacks. If your company is using one of these services, then your data is at risk.
Changing providers isn't easy with a file sharing service
Once you realize that a file sharing service is not for your business, you will try to find an alternative solution for digital document management. However, file sharing services are not equipped to make this an easy process. Migrating your digital documents to another service can be fairly difficult to figure out, and there may be hidden fees associated with the process.
So are you saying that businesses should not be using the cloud?
Your business should not be using traditional cloud file sharing services. This, however, doesn't mean that you need to avoid the cloud altogether. Its benefits are too great to be ignored. Instead of using a B2C-focused cloud service, you should be using a B2B one.
Invest in document management software that comes with secure cloud management capabilities. This will provide your company with all of the benefits of cloud-based document management, while having none of the drawbacks listed above.