How to enable End User Consent while backing up endpoint data

Business devices do not just include corporate data. A recent study shows that at least 70 percent of business devices are also used by employees for personal activities.

The ongoing pandemic and the sudden increase in the number of remote workers with company-owned hardware has also resulted in the increased possibility of personal data being stored on corporate devices. Many times, employees may do this for convenience or sometimes due to the sheer lack of awareness about safe and professional data/device handling practices.

Though almost all organizations discourage the practice, it is a fact that cannot be overlooked.

Data backups and personal data on corporate devices

Personal data on corporate devices is a fact of corporate life and needs to be handled in a very sensitive way. Considering that there are multiple instances where business endpoints are used for personal use and possibly used to store PII information, when a company sets up an automated backup from business endpoints, there are naturally chances of personal data also being backed up. With privacy laws similar to GDPR coming into play in most countries, this situation could increase the level of data monitoring and protection obligations for IT teams.

User consent while backing up endpoint data

One responsible step some businesses take is to provide intimation to end-users before backups are performed from their devices. This not only ensures that end-users are fully aware that their data is being backed up, but it also gives them the opportunity to remove their personal data before the backups are triggered.

Some businesses even go a step further and ask for consent from end-users before initiating the backup process.

User Consent feature in Parablu’s BluVault

In order to make this process fail-proof and simple, Parablu’s BluVault offers a feature that ensures that consent is taken from the end-users before backups are performed from their respective devices. Unless electronic consent is provided by the user, BluVault will not start or resume their backups.

The user has the option to provide consent or deny it. If the user chooses to do neither and ignores the electronic consent prompt, BluVault will also periodically prompt them for consent.

The text you wish to have displayed may need to be approved or vetted by your corporate communications team. So, BluVault also lets you customize the text that you’d like to have displayed to the end users. This text can be customized by policy – so if you wish for different classes of users to see varying consent text – you can configure it so.

How to enable the User Consent feature in Parablu’s BluVault

Here is how you can create a User Consent policy and push it to the identified devices/users.

1. Log in to the Parablu portal

2.On the Parablu portal home, go to the Policy Management tab

3. On the Policy Management page, under the Backup Policy tab, click Backup Policies

4. On the Backup Policies page, click on Create New Policy to create a new policy or use the Edit option to edit a policy

5. On the Create New Policyor the Edit Policy page, go to the Advanced tab and scroll down to the User Consent feature

6. Under the User Consent feature, toggle the button to enable it

7. Next, add your text in the field. This text will display in the screen that prompts end-users for consent.

8. Once the settings have been set as desired, you may click Save to complete the operation

7. Go to the Users tab or the Active Users tile on the portal home to apply the newly created policy

Once the policy is applied, end-users under that policy will automatically get a prompt asking for consent the next time the Parablu agent installed on the device starts.

If the user gives the consent for backups, their response is recorded and the Parablu agent will start backup operations from the device. If the user denies consent, their response is recorded, and backups will not run from their systems. The Parablu agent will also stop prompting them. If an end-user simply ignores or dismisses the prompt, the consent request will appear again whenever the Parablu agent gets restarted.

There are several other BluVault features that have been thoughtfully designed to ensure that enterprises can leverage as part of their backup strategy.  To learn about such features, reach out to our experts and ask for a demo.