WatchDox, a provider of secure access, file sync and collaboration solutions, today announced the availability of WatchDox for SharePoint, an integrated solution that securely enables SharePoint libraries to be both mobile and collaborative across company boundaries. Organizations can leverage their existing SharePoint access rights to apply WatchDox’s document-centric security controls to their content, ensuring that documents remain protected once they are downloaded to a smartphone, tablet, or even a third-party collaborator’s PC or mobile device.
SharePoint’s native capabilities need to be extended to meet user demand for both mobile access to content and external collaboration. However, IT departments cannot lose control over or visibility into what happens with the sensitive documents often stored in SharePoint when they are sent to third parties or unmanaged tablets and smartphones. WatchDox for SharePoint bridges that gap, delivering the access and collaboration features users want while maintaining the control and tracking that IT needs to ensure the organization remains both secure and compliant.
WatchDox customers have applied the SharePoint connector in a wide variety of use cases, including:
• Enabling traveling investment bankers to securely share annotations on deal documents stored in SharePoint while ensuring that those documents are not inappropriately accessed by unapproved parties;
• Ensuring that product design documents and other intellectual property downloaded from SharePoint cannot be forwarded to or accessed by unauthorized parties such as competitors; and
• Revoking access to documents immediately when employees’ work or personal mobile devices are lost or stolen and when employees leave the organization.
“WatchDox for SharePoint extends SharePoint to help organizations embrace mobility and collaboration without compromising security and control,” said Ryan Kalember, chief product officer at WatchDox. “SharePoint makes it easy to share documents securely within the enterprise, but providing a secure mobility and collaboration extension to SharePoint helps CIOs ensure that their users don’t turn to shadow IT services like Dropbox or Box to get their jobs done.”
WatchDox for SharePoint is administered from the normal SharePoint interface. Functions, such as online viewing and check-in/check-out, still perform as usual. Security settings are triggered only when documents are downloaded from the SharePoint interface for mobile access or collaboration. This fully integrated experience means that there are no changes to the SharePoint user experience and users don’t need training to utilize WatchDox for SharePoint.
