National, provincial and municipal government departments are increasingly adopting cloud document management to protect their internal communications and prevent documents from being manipulated or lost, says cloud email and document company Mimecast sales director Andrew Soddy.

Such cloud services also eliminate the use of complex information technology (IT) systems and equipment on site, making consumption of high-quality IT services easier and less expensive, he notes.

“Our archives are immutable and permanent, with multiple levels of redundancy. “Government departments can select the specific services and service-level agreements that they require, making it easy for them to meet their legal obligations and quickly adapt to any changes in regulations,” he says.

Further, while the security around sensitive documents – such as tender documents – allows only specific people access to them and prevents unintended leaks, the immutability of the documents captured on Mimecast’s service means that original documents are always available during audits, which helps to prevent fraud and manipulation of records.

Any interactions on the system are captured and a full audit trail is available to auditors to resolve disputes or allegations.

Mimecast also holds Inter-national Standard Organisation information security standard 27001 accreditation. Such standards in cloud services reduce the disparate and multiple standards which many government email and IT systems conform to, enabling departments to standardise their document management and email systems. This reduces complexity and improves management of documents across various levels of government and between departments, highlights Soddy.

“While government was initially a slow adopter of cloud services, the value of a subscription cloud service model is becoming more compelling to control costs and ensure quality, without the need to have high-level IT skills within these departments, many of which are in multiple buildings and are situated far from skills bases.”

Meanwhile, additional services offered by Mimecast, such as its large file transfer service, can replace more vulnerable systems that people typically use, such as DropBox, further enabling the departments to ensure security of their documents.

“People use programs that they find useful and practical, and companies and governments should rather enable them to use similar services than deny them the use of such systems.

“Our services can also be accessed securely from multiple devices and platforms, including desktop computers, tablets and smartphones, which match the demand from users for access from any device that they prefer, while maintaining enterprise-level security of communications,” explains Soddy.

Mimecast also automatically filters out spam, checks the security features of links in emails and that attachments do not contain malicious code. It also prevents users from sending out sensitive information, which, in turn, prevents the infiltration of IT systems by cybercriminals and advanced persistent threats, concludes Soddy.