Using Slack to stay in touch with co-workers and business partners will become more secure than ever thanks to a number of new updates.
The popular collaboration software has announced several upgrades that it says will help boost security for organisations using Slack both internally and externally.
The new Slack Connect service, dubbed, "a more secure and productive way for organizations to communicate with each other", will allow businesses to move conversations out of lengthy and confusing email chains and into Slack.
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This could mean discussions with suppliers, partners, customers and more can now be ported away from email services that could face cyberattacks or other kinds of scams, and instead into Slack, where they are at least centered in one single location.
Slack Connect
Asides from improved security, the company says Slack Connect can enable faster communication to help build stronger business relationships, as well as increased transparency. Admins will be able to maintain control over their company's data and monitor external access, as unlike email, Slack Connect means users will only receive messages and files from verified Slack members that are part of your organization.
Admins will also soon be able to quickly vet external organizations before connecting them to a their business network, with approved partners identified with a badge, making it quicker and easier to note who is a legitimate partner.
External users can also be restricted from seeing confidential or valuable information thanks to a new barrier functionality. The blocks, which could also apply to internal business units such as legal or payroll, can be used by admins to prevent specific user groups from messaging or calling other user groups.
Users will also now have more options over where their data is stored, with new data residency for Slack allowing companies to store their data outside the US, with options including Sydney, Frankfurt, Paris, Tokyo, London and Montreal.
Slack says that the upgrades were part of a reaction to the growth of cyberattacks targeting users working from home.
"In the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, digital transformation is happening at warp speed," Slack wrote in a blog post announcing the news.
"The kind of widespread technological adaptation we expected to see years from now has been truncated to a matter of months as organizations adopt cloud solutions to keep their teams connected. And as more and more workplaces go fully remote, security has never been more paramount."
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