Guiding Principle Spotlight – Security and Platform Settings

Our guiding principles help ensure that we remain true to the values and character we aspire BoardEffect to embody.

Last month we focused on the guiding principle of Control as it relates to Meeting Book Files.   Continuing with our discussion, this month I want to take a closer look at Security and how this guiding principle is expressed within BoardEffect’s Platform Settings to support the board’s responsibilities across its 3 operating cycles.

BoardEffect offers organizations the opportunity to be intentional with the security of their platforms by allowing them to manage settings and control the level of access that meets their objectives.  Accordingly, the guiding principle of Security underpins our feature design process and is expressed in many functions throughout the platform.

Configuring platform settings should be informed by your organization’s information security policies.  With any setting, it’s important to strike a balance between security and the realities of user behavior.  For example, a short session timeout is best practice; however, if made too short, it may frustrate users by having them login more frequently. This is where our guiding principles of Control and Security work together providing options to configure the platform specific to the organization’s needs.

This is handled in the Security Summary section of your platform’s settings.  Active settings will display a checkmark in a green circle and/or the current setting.  For example, Session Timeout will display the amount of time set, i.e. 30 minutes, 1 hour, etc. Inactive settings will display a minus sign in a red circle.  These settings can be changed by contacting BoardEffect support, and our team can walk you through the configuration options.  This is an easy process that can be addressed quickly via phone or by opening a ticket.

We recognize that sometimes there will be tension between two or more of these principles (e.g. security, control and ease of use may pull in different directions).  This is healthy.  We will always seek to balance the demands of each in a way that serves the overall best interest of BoardEffect’s users.  As we continue with this series, we’ll explore the other intersections between the guiding principles and how we are evolving the product to provide their best expression.