Slack Technologies Inc. today debuted a set of new security tools that will enable enterprises to control with more granularity who can access employee chat channels and how.

Some of the features are available today, while the rest will launch further down the road. They’re all rolling out for Slack Enterprise Grid, the version of the chat platform geared toward large and security-conscious corporate customers. 

Of the three features that are available today, two focus on mobile users. Slack has added the option to make two-factor authentication a requirement for workers who log into the service via their handsets. Additionally, administrators can now prevent a user from downloading messages and files onto their phone if it’s not connected to the company’s centralized device management system, which reduces the chance of data ending up on an insecure handset.

The new controls are already seeing some use. Slack said one unnamed company in the banking sector is blocking mobile downloads to limit the sharing of confidential records outside the office.

In the same spirit of preventing data from ending up where it’s not supposed to, Slack has added a whitelisting feature. Enterprises can now lay out a list of authorized Slack workspaces and limit their employees’ access to those specific chat rooms. The idea behind the feature is to avoid scenarios where, say, a team creates a new workspace without informing the information technology department and uses it to share sensitive materials in an unsupervised manner.

Slack plans to follow up today’s update with a number of additional security controls that will roll out in the coming  months. They, too, will mostly focus on helping companies better manage access to chat rooms from mobile devices.

Administrators will receive the ability to block jailbroken handsets and remotely log out a user’s account if their phone is stolen or lost. Plus, IT departments will longer have to remind workers about downloading updates to the Slack app. The team chat provider is working on a feature that will make it possible to have the app automatically download the latest version, which should save time both for administrators and end-users.

The updates continue an ongoing effort by Slack to make its team chat service more secure. The company is trying to win over more large enterprises and organizations in regulated industries such as healthcare, which have to take particular care to protect the information employees share in chat.

Photo: Slack