Boardroom Platforms: Old-School Security in Modern Tech

Through a great partnership, our business engages with several interns and tech savvy young people at the start of their careers. Engaging with them on a wide range of topics is often a source of inspiration and self-reflection. I was explaining how, when I started my career, I was the company secretary for a listed firm and one of my tasks was to keep the minute book up to date. This involved gluing the printed and signed minutes of the past meeting into a large book. “Dude – you killed so many trees!” and “But what if the book got lost?” or “Did you ever spill coffee on it?”. Embarrassingly, I can attest to all three.

As technology has progressed, we have all become more relaxed about where statutory records are kept. As much as those interns laughed at the idea of pasting hard-copy minutes into a book, how many directors are aware of their responsibility to safeguard company documentation, and important statutory information?

I asked colleagues, clients, and some employees where they thought these important documents were kept. Some of the answers were amusing and most of them were mortifying: “In the cloud”, “Doesn’t Karyn have it on a hard drive?”, “It’s on SharePoint”, “It’s on the Drive”.

While these answers are not necessarily wrong – and are considered acceptable practices in many cases – they do open your business to risk and potential liability should you have custody of information that is protected or subject to legislative protections.

We should not send confidential company information by email. We should store confidential information on secured servers where we have full control of who has access to them. One might argue that those who are hired to fill this security function are the ones responsible for controlling access. This is not correct. The transmission of electronic communication across country borders (given where servers are kept) requires that we all make it our business to know where confidential company information is stored, and when it is and is not permissible to share it.

Another pearl of wisdom from one of our interns: “Who reads email anymore?”. We collaborate online, synchronously, and asynchronously. Enterprise software has allowed us to chat and share content on one another’s devices while online and connected. In this context, sending out board meeting agendas or financial statements via email does seem as archaic as printing, cutting and pasting those minutes in the minute books.

Fortunately for my long-suffering interns, and anxious directors, there are several companies that now provide board meeting platforms with the requisite data security and offer the opportunity to collaborate during the board or committee meeting.

Here are some good questions to ask when choosing which platform is best suited to your business:

Where is the server that stores this information located?
What sort of security protocols exist to ensure that new members do not expose the organisation to data breaches by inadvertently misplacing login details?
Does the platform allow for digital verification and signing of resolutions?
Is there an audit trail of access to documents and of the signing of any board-related documents?
How quicky and willingly will the company respond to requests for assistance in using the platform, particularly during meetings?
Is there a local support team?
And finally, and importantly given the sustainability of the need for this security – at what cost is this available?

Answering these questions will enable a director or a board to make an informed decision as to which platform is best suited to the business. Whatever the decision, there is only one bad one, and that is not to switch to a secure platform. Email will not suffice. If the interns get it, so should you.

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