New Horizon Security Services, Inc. has important work in Virginia. They provide armed and unarmed security services to government agencies, private companies, shopping malls, and other businesses all across the state.
With 400+ employees, offices in four cities, and clients statewide, they need a file storage system that is secure, easily accessible by all, and lets them closely manage who can share the files and to what extent.
The basic web tools they were using for an employee portal proved too limiting, so New Horizon turned to Onehub as their secure, online file sharing solution.
They found that Onehub was easier to use and offered them more capabilities, such as the ability to control file access and usage, view files without downloading them, and customize client portals.
“We like Onehub a lot around here,” says Kate Painter, Communications & Public Relations Specialist and the one who manages the company’s Onehub workspaces. “It gives us a central point to go to for sharing files and ensures people have access in the right ways. It’s convenient, quick, simple, and effective for everyone.”
New Horizon devotes one workspace as an employee portal (intranet), and sets up customer portals for clients. A single login gives users 24-hour admittance to all the workspaces they are allowed to access.
For instance, at the intranet portal, employees find centralized benefits information and forms, company updates and newsletters, links to their online timesheets, training info, and more. Security officers go to client portals to view their post orders (task lists) for a particular assignment, info about the work site, and any changes in tasks.
Clients, in turn, have 24/7 access to New Horizon services and information for all their buildings and sites. They can see photos, credentials, and post orders of currently assigned officers to help them put faces to names and know what to expect of officers on duty. They can also look up daily shift and special incident reports, patrol check-in records, New Horizon security protocols (such as for a health emergency or bomb threat), and even local crime patterns for an area. Links on the New Horizon home page let clients log in directly to Onehub workspaces, which are customized to include client images and look like an extension of the New Horizon website.
“Onehub lets us be very transparent and responsive with our clients,” says Painter. “All the information anyone needs is right there, available at whatever time, from anywhere a person happens to be.”
With 50 to 75 Onehub workspaces active at once and with so many people using them, New Horizon closely controls access and user permissions. For example, only management teams can post content and messages, and employees can only view or print documents. Client invoices receive limited access rights, and most files are locked to prevent alteration. Some documents, such as the company manual, also receive Onehub’s automatic watermarking, which stamps the email address of the person printing the file—useful for tracing if it ever got into a competitor’s hands.
“Being able to limit Onehub’s functions to certain users or files helps us keep things private or make them public as we need,” says Painter.
Use of Onehub is so ingrained at New Horizon that learning it is part of every employee’s orientation. As Painter puts it, “It seems like it’s been here forever now, so often do we use it. It’s easy, customizable, and a great communications tool.”
See More Onehub StoriesIt gives us a central point to go to for sharing files and ensures people have access in the right ways. It’s convenient, quick, simple, and effective for everyone.Kate Painter
Communications & Public Relations Specialist, NHSS