Q&A: Quip Shield Brings Advanced Trust Features to Modern Collaboration

Today Salesforce is extending Quip’s privacy and security offerings with the announcement of Quip Shield, a new set of advanced security measures designed specifically for the complexities of enterprise collaboration that help enhance trust, compliance, and governance across any industry—without slowing work down.

Modern technology and productivity tools like Quip are transforming the way employees collaborate in real-time, on any device, across the globe. But not all information is meant to be shared with everyone, which is why Quip is fully encrypted and provides customers with the strong security required to meet any company’s specific security and compliance needs, while still enabling teams to work quickly and collaboratively to drive business forward. From secure infrastructure services to granular permissions and external sharing controls, Quip has everyone covered.

However, companies in highly regulated industries have rigorous compliance regulations for how they govern sensitive data that go even further. We sat down with Quip Co-CEO and Co-Founder Kevin Gibbs to learn more about how Quip Shield is paving the way for companies in even the most tightly regulated industries to be more productive and collaborative.

What was the inflection point that pushed Quip to take on this challenge?
K: We founded Quip with one mission in mind: to make every employee more productive, no matter what company or industry they’re in. With collaborative docs, spreadsheets, slides and chat we’ve fundamentally changed the way people work over the last few years.

But we also recognize that there is a crisis of trust across technology that centers around the misuse of data. With Quip Shield we are making it easy for any company to be more productive and collaborate across teams without compromising privacy or security. This is especially important for customers in industries that have hefty compliance regulations that they need to abide by. Now security will not have to come at the cost of productivity—Quip Shield enables companies to easily control access to sensitive data and enforce security and compliance with automated controls, all without interrupting service or productivity.

It’s hard to think of an industry that hasn’t been upended by trust and security issues. What verticals stand to benefit most from Quip Shield?
K: Companies that require custom IT controls such as healthcare, financial services, manufacturing and public sector all have regulatory and compliance frameworks they need to address. Whether a company needs to protect customer’s personally identifiable information, health history and treatment record, intellectual property or security details, Quip Shield provides the tools to appropriately manage sensitive customer or corporate data against strict regulatory requirements, industry standards, corporate policies, and other compliance measures.

What’s an example of how Quip Shield will immediately impact these customers?
K: The one thing I hear most from customers is that they want to work faster and more efficiently. Just last month, I was talking to a CIO of a manufacturing company and she said their biggest challenge is they just can’t move fast enough. And the biggest barrier isn’t anything external, it’s their own–sometimes antiquated–processes for the strict compliance and governance regulations they adhere to slowing them down. This is squarely what Quip aims to fix. We get teams and entire organizations, and then ultimately, companies moving faster and in a secure way.

Take healthcare, for example. Now, with Quip Enterprise Key Management, health insurance providers are able to encrypt sensitive Protected Health Information (PHI) and maintain bottom-line control of its availability to their Quip users. Event Monitoring ensures that any unauthorized access to PHI is flagged so the content can be locked down. And because Quip is now HIPAA certified, all health professionals can also feel empowered to securely collaborate around PHI in real-time, maintaining full compliance.

And with Event Monitoring, manufacturing companies can mitigate data leakage by keeping a close eye on who is accessing their intellectual property, trade secrets, and roadmap details and how that data is being utilized.

Many CIOs see information sharing– and how to do it securely– as the final mile of cloud collaboration. What’s different about Quip Shield’s approach to that challenge?
K: Quip was built from the ground up to be safe and secure. Trust is the fabric of effective collaboration and we share this important value with Salesforce. Since day one we’ve been providing the strong security controls needed to protect sensitive data, while still enabling teams to work quickly and collaboratively to drive business forward. But balancing security and productivity is an acute challenge for many companies— especially those in regulated industries that we talked about earlier.

Quip Shield is a game changer for enterprise productivity and collaboration, enhancing trust, compliance, and governance for even the most regulated organizations — without slowing work down. This is accomplished through three core services:

• Enterprise Key Management (EKM): Create, manage, and control access to your own encryption keys. Maintain full visibility into all key usage in an unchangeable audit log and respond to potential threats by granularly revoking access to your encrypted data at any time.
• Event Monitoring: Real-time event logging readily ingested by Security Information and Event Monitoring (SIEM) systems and Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB). Monitor for malicious activity, surface threats as soon as possible, and take immediate action.
• Antivirus Scanning: Automatically scan files uploaded to Quip for malicious content. Help guard your business-critical data against known and unknown threats by preventing users from downloading potentially infected files.

How can companies get started integrating Quip Shield into their workflow?
K: The beauty of Quip Shield is that it works seamlessly in the background without impacting the end user experience. Admins can set up Quip Shield and customize for their organizations needs, and in the case of an incident, they can work to isolate and secure data with minimal disruption.