Securing Slack: 5 Tips for Safer Messaging, Collaboration

Remote workers and scattered teams are relying on Slack more and more for messaging and collaboration. Here are a few extra tips for keeping data and systems more secure when using Slack.

Demand for business-focused messaging platforms like Slack have surged during the great work-from-home (WFH) migration. While that was a logical move considering the popular platform was literally built for distributed team communications, many security processes got trampled in the stampede.

(image by ink drop, via Adobe Stock)

“This growth in user counts is stress-testing digital collaboration applications — many of which weren’t originally crafted to handle such an enormous spike in usage over this short of a time frame,” says Michael Gorelik, CTO at Morphisec, an endpoint security provider.

“Our 2020 WFH Cybersecurity Threat Index found that business chat apps such as Slack and Microsoft Teams were rated by WFH employees as their second most essential tool in working remotely. Yet workers acknowledged they were the least cautious in using these types of services,” says Gorelik.

Despite, or perhaps because of, remote workers’ rather cavalier attitudes, the potential damages to companies from Slack security breaches are quite serious.

“We have all seen the examples of what happens when a CEO’s e-mail is leaked to the press, and it contains nuclear opinions on customer, employees, investors, and the market, in general. If people have historically had their guard down when communicating in e-mail, they likely have no filter at all with what they put in Slack,” warns Caleb Barlow, CEO of CynergisTek, a healthcare cybersecurity and compliance consultancy and managed services firm.

It is prudent for companies to secure their Slack channels. Here’s a roundup of Slack’s and security professionals’ recommendations of specific steps your company can take toward making Slack safer.

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Pam Baker is author of Data Divination: Big Data Strategies, which met with rave reviews and is currently being used in universities as a textbook for both business and tech courses. It’s also sold to business audiences in the general market. The US Chamber of Commerce and … View Full Bio

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