The productivity of staff can be increased by allowing them to choose their information technology (IT) applications, but such an approach also requires that a business’ IT policies are enforced across platforms and applications, says unified information security and management company Mimecast senior sales engineer Heino Gevers.

The Mimecast file archiving service enables end-users to archive specific file types from network shares, SharePoint, My Documents, Box.Net and Drop Box, into their Mimecast archive and then access them from within either Microsoft Outlook, a secure Web-based portal or mobile devices. The information is run through the client’s security policies before being sent, which prevents data leaks, intellectual property loss and security risks.

“End-users adopt programs that they find useful and enriching. This will happen either outside a company’s control, especially with the proliferation of devices and third-party services, such as Drop Box, or a company can allow its staff to use the programs they prefer to use, with data transmitted only after its corporate IT policies have been applied, enabling the company to remain compliant with rigorous corporate security standards,” he says.

“End-user secure productivity can be increased through the use of technologies and various programs, while the business can retain comprehensive control and storage of the data transmitted in its work environment. Data can also be archived from a broad range of repositories,” notes Gevers.

Mimecast protects clients’ data in accordance with ISO 27001 standards. The company enables clients to enforce their company IT policies on whoever accesses what data and to log all inter- actions and requests for full forensic traceability.

For example, all files are checked for keywords, designated by the client and in accordance with information security standards. The transmission is then placed on hold if sensitive information is detected.

Mimecast, in accordance with ISO 27001, has triple redundancy of all its data centres and data stored by clients and uses separate parts of the electricity grid to provide full access to services, should a power failure occur at one of its data centres. This enables the company to continue serving files to clients uninter- ruptedly and independently of customers’ on-premise infrastructure.

Users can also recover archived data by themselves by using the system, he adds.

Studies have also determined that a large amount of a business’s intellectual property resides in its email data because email use is standard practice for most companies, he notes.

“Mimecast enables companies to store and then use the information in their email history to manage and inform their daily operations. “We can also populate our servers with a company’s historic data to enable them to access historical information on their company immediately,” says Gevers.

The company’s archiving of a client’s data enables the client to search large volumes of data quickly for specific information, keywords or document types. Data can, therefore, be extracted more efficiently and used by all employees, from the secretary to the CEO.

“The idea is to have all data available at all times from any platform, with the security of this data remaining under the control of the business.”

Part of Mimecast’s file-archiv- ing services comprises a new mobile application called Mime-Files, which enables users to use any Apple, Microsoft, Android and Blackberry mobile device to search through the documents attributed to the user. The users can also decide what documents to cache on the device to open them while offline.

“These capabilities enhance end-users’ experience, making them more efficient, secure and productive. Our service-level agreements guarantees 100% availability of our perpetual archive – an employee cannot say that the document was unavailable, or that he or she could not find it,” quips Gevers.

The evolution of IT is partly being driven by the adoption of applications and systems by end-users, he concludes.