Content, data, information – no matter what your terminology, it’s everywhere and being created by everyone in your organisation. No surprise; that information is not always properly governed by the people creating the content – much less by the organisation itself.

In a desire for more and more convenience, faster access to information and ease of use, users have found more ways to conduct business than ever before. Not only are employees bringing their own devices (BYOD), there’s also BYOA (bring your own app) to think about too. Applications such as Dropbox, OneNote and so many others have been created for the sole purpose of helping users collaborate and share files easily.

So what are the implications of using these types of applications and this every-growing “bring your own” mindset?

First and foremost – in an era challenged by the hacker underground as well as increased regulatory demands, we are all concerned with information security and compliance – or at least you would think so. I don’t know about you, but those concerns coupled with the innate ability to share documents in a nearly unfettered way via file sync and share technologies have me seeing images of the Wild Wild West with content (rather than bullets) flying all over the place.

Instead of cowboys shooting up the town; I see employees inviting colleagues, partners and other third parties to collaborate on documents with no thought given to compliance issues, secured access nor proper retention policies. This seems crazy. Right?

To my chagrin, convenience and speed outweigh any degree of common sense or corporate policy here every time. Unfortunately, this is human nature. In addition, general BYOD activities and concerns that have plagued organizations for years, have seen many the tablet, mobile device or personal laptop left on a plane or in a restaurant, exposing valuable data to hackers or simple data loss when not properly secured. So what are the implications? In the scenario of BYOD and BYOA – they could be devastating depending on the degree of exposure.

In fact, “Data leakage through employees' use of consumer-grade file synchronisation and sharing programs poses a significant threat to most organizations. Enterprise file sync and share (EFSS) offerings provide security against this threat, along with benefits such as collaboration capabilities, simplicity and a user-centric design optimized for mobile experiences.”

So what exactly is EFSS anyway? This new category of tool is defined by Gartner as:

"EFSS (Enterprise File Sync and Share) refers to a range of on-premises or cloud-based capabilities that enable individuals to sync and share documents, photos, videos and files across multiple devices, such as smartphones, tablets and PCs. File sharing can be within the organisation, as well as externally (e.g. with partners and customers) or on a mobile device as data sharing among apps. Security and collaboration support are critical capabilities of EFSS to address enterprise priorities."

The promise of Enterprise File Sync and Share systems is that by offering these capabilities as part of your corporate IT strategy employees can collaborate effectively within the bounds of your wider enterprise content management and information governance strategy. That, of course, means that these capabilities need to be included and integrated into your strategy. For many, however, this hasn’t been the case as many file sharing tools are free for use and easy to deploy outside of your corporate IT.

To be clear, file sharing isn’t an entirely new category of productivity products (sharing apps like Evernote, OneNote and Dropbox have been around for years now). And many of us are guilty of succumbing to the allure of the convenience and ease of sharing corporate information with a personal Dropbox account – due to something as simple as size restrictions that kept us from getting our work completed.

This isn’t a new information governance issue. We have been challenged by this issue for years now, starting with the ability to email corporate information to a personal email account. The difference today, however, is that our collaborative device can now fit in a pocket or a purse – and the number of potential BYOA possibilities has rocketed skyward. And, with the Internet of Things (IoT) this will only continue to increase drastically. So when I ask, “Is file sharing killing enterprise governance?”, it very well could if you don’t get ahead of this phenomenon.

If you think back to the Wild West analogy, while the West was dangerous, sheriffs routinely collected weapons from everyone entering the town. Town ordinances against carrying weapons helped to limit bloodshed from too much rotgut (i.e., they kept policies in place about what tools could be used and how.) And a cattle drive, barring the odd stampede, was a controlled movement of cattle from grazing land to railway terminal points for shipping to the slaughter yards of Chicago and elsewhere. Cowboys “governed” the cattle and kept them on the trail.

So while certainly dangerous, the Wild West wasn’t always as “wild” or “chaotic” as popular myth would have you believe. You need to disarm employees while empowering them to be productive via the appropriate vehicles within your information governance strategy. As stated before, convenience and speed will outweigh common sense and corporate policies every time. Even if your plan is to employ Enterprise File Sync and Share, employees who have become accustomed to their tried and true file sharing BYOA of choice will continue unless harnessed and controlled.

William Shute is Chief Strategy and Marketing Officer at Viewpointe, a records management consulting form and service provider headquartered in New York.