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As more businesses face the challenge of employees using personal devices to access their work files via public clouds, Polkast has launched a new work-group application that provides secure mobile content management (MCM) for small businesses. Polkast Pro enables users to access and share business content directly without having to send the documents to a public cloud.
Designed to help small businesses protect company data when employees bring their own devices to work, the new app can turn any computer into a private cloud server to support remote employees, sales and service teams, Polkast said. The desktop computer, as a secure file server, allows mobile device users to get access to all of their content directly from their desktop or NAS device. This gives remote employees access to all the data they need in the field via their iPad, tablet or smartphone.
All files stored on the computer can be securely accessed and shared without the need to sync files to the cloud or purchase new equipment. It also translates into unlimited file storage without having to pay for storage fees on traditional clouds, said Polkast. The new folder-sharing feature of Polkast Pro allows users to set permissions that provide colleagues with mobile access to all the files in selected folders stored on their computer.
“It is astounding how many small businesses put confidential documents such as budgets, product plans and contracts in cloud storage services without even thinking of the security risks, simply because they did not have a good alternative for sharing files,” Hong Bui, founder and CEO, Polkast, Laguna Beach, Calif., said in a statement. “With cloud security issues regularly in the news, people want to regain control of their content, and Polkast is the ideal solution that allows small businesses to securely share and store their mission-critical content.”
With the bring-your-own-device (BYOD) phenomena, data security is a “concern for small businesses that don’t have the resources to implement or manage an expensive enterprise content management solution,” said Polkast.
According to a Gartner survey of CIOs, more than half of employers will require employees to supply their own devices for work by 2017. The report also reveals that BYOD programs are used most in midsize and large organizations, but it also allows small companies to go mobile without a huge investment in devices and services.
“The risk of data leakage on mobile platforms is particularly acute,” according to Gartner. “Some mobile devices are designed to share data in the cloud and have no general-purpose file system for applications to share, increasing the potential for data to be easily duplicated between applications and moved between applications and the cloud.”
The OEM Advantage Group, a Polkast Pro customer, said the company wasn’t able to use iPads to their full potential in the field because of storage limits and security concerns.
“With Polkast Pro, our sales team can securely access, download and dynamically cache our entire data library plus both receive/upload the latest updates on active projects,” Michael Garon, technical sales director (USA) at The OEM Advantage Group, said in a statement.
Polkast works with a variety of client apps, including iOS, Android, Windows, Mac and Linux. The mobile app is available for free in the iTunes App Store, Google Play and Amazon App Store. Polkast Pro is an in-app upgrade for $4.99 month.