Working with contractors and partners rarely involves shared chats, video meetings, and document sharing. To ensure such interactions remain secure, it's important to consider how access to corporate data is organized in advance.
In this article, we'll explore the specifics of interacting with external partners, risks, and scenarios for business communications.
Where Risks Occur
The main challenge when working with partners is that each organization uses its own IT infrastructure and its own information security rules. At the same time, business issues need to be resolved quickly, without additional integrations between systems.
Almost any interaction with external parties involves the exchange of corporate information. Through correspondence, calls, and video meetings, employees discuss commercial terms, approve documents, present presentations, and share project materials. If such information ends up in the hands of third parties, it could lead to financial and reputational losses.
In many organizations, the use of public messaging apps is already limited by internal information security policies, as the company cannot fully control access to data, conversation history, and the subsequent dissemination of information.
Situations that create risks of information leakage:
- employees sending contracts to a counterparty in an unsecured public messaging app;
- when sharing a screen in a video conferencing service, other tabs containing confidential data are accidentally captured;
- discussing commercial terms in public services means storing conversation history and files on the personal smartphone of a counterparty or employee, whose accounts could be compromised.
How to protect corporate data
To work with external parties, companies often use several different services: separate video conferencing solutions, instant messaging apps, email, and file storage. A trend over the past few years has been all-in-one corporate communications platforms. Companies are gradually switching to corporate communications platforms where communication, collaboration, and security mechanisms are integrated into a single environment. According to the portal, 70-80% of demand is for such solutions.
Corporate communication platforms use several mechanisms to protect data and manage access for external participants.
Corporate Platform Features
Guest Links. Contractors, partners, and other external participants can be connected to work chats and video conferences without creating a full corporate account.
Role-Based Access Model. The administrator determines which chats and materials an external participant has access to, what actions they can perform, and how long their access rights are valid. Access can be changed or revoked if necessary.
Centralized storage of information on our own servers. Correspondence, documents, and meeting notes remain within the company's workspace. A unified environment simplifies information search and preserves context.
Data encryption. Protects information during transmission and storage, reducing the risk of interception or unauthorized access.
Multi-factor authentication. Requires additional identity verification upon login and helps protect user accounts.
Action logging. Records logins, settings changes, file operations, and other events, simplifying auditing and incident investigation.
Integration with enterprise security tools. Enterprise platforms can work in conjunction with DLP (Data Loss Prevention), SIEM (Security Information and Event Management), and other information security tools that help prevent data leaks and monitor security events.
Communication with partners: eXpress capabilities
In the eXpress corporate messenger, you can invite external participants to work chats and video conferences while maintaining control over access and corporate data. Below, we'll look at how this is implemented. In practice.
Adding Guests to Chats and Video Conferencing
The organizer creates an invitation link and sends it to the contractor, client, or partner. After clicking the link, the external participant gains access only to the chats or meetings to which they were invited. Creating a corporate account is not required.
During a video meeting, the organizer manages participant rights, and the administrator can further restrict the use of individual features. For example, preventing external users from seeing the screen sharing of corporate eXpress users.
The same mechanism is used for work chats and channels. The invitation is sent via a link, access to which can be customized (setting a password, restricting access to users on the organizer's and trusted corporate servers, and expiration date).
If both companies use eXpress, employees can collaborate via Federation. servers.. Each organization maintains its own infrastructure, and the data does not leave the corporate network.
Is a role-based model necessary?
In many cases, it is important to determine what actions an invited guest can perform within the organization's workspace and what information they will have access to.
For this purpose, a role-based access control model is used. It allows you to configure security policies for different categories of users – employees, contractors, partners, or other external participants. Instead of individually setting up each user, the administrator creates a set of rules for a specific role and applies it to the entire group.
Example settings:
- prohibit screenshots;
- restrictions on forwarding, downloading, or saving attachments;
- using the clipboard.
"A key business requirement is the ability to quickly restrict access, apply uniform rules, and ensure compliance with internal requirements and regulatory standards," noted Igor Malyshev, Director of Services at eXpress, in a comment for .
The principles of role-based model construction, rights inheritance, and access control mechanisms were discussed in more detail on .
Step-by-step process for organizing a secure meeting
The user shouldn't constantly think about security, but security mechanisms should be in place at every stage of interaction. They determine who has access to data, where the history of correspondence and meeting records is stored, and how the company controls corporate information.
What does an ideal and secure flow of interaction with the external environment look like:
- Coordination. Your team plans the time for the call. The event is recorded in Shared corporate calendar to avoid any conflicts.
- Creating a link. AboutThe organizer creates a video conference and generates a unique guest link. IMPORTANT: Each link is created for a specific session.
- Sending The organizer sends the invitation link to the third-party participant using any convenient method (email or messenger).
- Participating. The participant clicks the link through a browser (they can connect without additional registration) or connects using it in a pre-installed application. To prevent unauthorized access, you can set a password for joining the meeting.
- Closing the loop. Once the meeting ends, guest access is automatically revoked. Subsequent attempts to access the old link will be rejected by the system.
What secure platform tools simplify video meetings?
To ensure that working with outsourcers is not only secure but also effective, corporate software must combine strict compliance standards with advanced collaboration tools.
What to look for:
- Video meeting recording. Save calls for those who were unable to attend. The video archive must be stored in a secure environment on Russian servers.
- Screen sharing. Securely display reports, coordinate layouts, and demonstrate IT product functionality in real time.
- AI recording. Artificial intelligence automatically transcribes meetings, highlights key points, and generates a follow-up report with decisions made.
- Single space. All interaction history, sent files, links, and call recordings remain within a secure corporate application, rather than being scattered across public services.
- Clear planning. Calls are tied to specific projects and task deadlines.
How to schedule meetings: from creation to automatic minutes
- Contextual linking. You schedule a meeting directly in the company's built-in calendar and link it to a specific project card.
- Smart messaging. The system automatically notifies internal participants and generates a unique link for external guests. A link for contractors is sent by the client's manager.
- During-meeting interaction and recording. During the meeting, you have access to a secure chat for document sharing, screen sharing, and recording.
- Conclusion and AI analytics. After disconnecting external guests, the AI generates a text document with the summary (question - solution). This summary is automatically sent to the task card in the task tracker. Contractors cannot reuse the link.
Conclusions
Interacting with external contractors no longer requires companies to compromise between security and convenience. Choosing a certified Russian platform with a "guest access" feature allows you to remove the barrier between different corporate systems.
Moving meetings to a secure environment solves several business problems at once:
- Seamless interaction: external guests can quickly access a link with one click, via a browser or app.
- Automate routine tasks: an AI protocol for automatically recording agreements and secure screen sharing.
A well-designed process helps establish transparent interactions with any contractors and minimize the risk of important data leakage.
