Trade wars are making engineering collaboration risky. This is what a real solution looks like.

A new era of risk for engineering data

Today’s hardware products are built by global teams. Engineers collaborate across time zones and borders. Suppliers span dozens of countries. And technical data moves between them daily.

That reality now comes with unprecedented risk.

Export control regulations like EAR and ITAR are expanding. Regulatory enforcement is intensifying. Industries from defense to energy to semiconductors are seeing new restrictions on how design data is shared—and with whom.

Semiconductors may be the headline, but they’re just the beginning.

For any company that deals in advanced hardware, a single misstep—an uncontrolled file share, a supplier added to the wrong thread, an email attachment forwarded beyond its intended audience—can lead to fines, market access issues, and long-term damage to customer trust.

The default approach isn’t secure—and it doesn’t scale

Most companies still rely on tools that were never designed for secure collaboration. And that’s the root of the problem.

❌ Email, PowerPoint, and spreadsheets

CAD screenshots are pasted into PowerPoint decks. Feedback is shared over email. Files get saved to desktops and forwarded without traceability. A single mistake—like attaching the wrong version to the wrong email—can create an uncontained security incident.

❌ FTP sites

FTP offers better access control than email—but relies on downloads. There’s no version control, no feedback capture, and no traceability. As Hyundai Mobis discovered, even strict FTP workflows often lead to engineers defaulting back to USB drives or informal tools.

“As stupid as it may sound, sharing files was very hard to do here with all the security.”
— Hak Park, Engineering Manager, Hyundai Mobis​

❌ PLM systems

While PLM is essential for managing part records, it wasn’t designed for collaborative review. Trying to use it that way often leads to markup clutter, serialized feedback, and admin overhead.

“Each person would have to open up every individual file, make comments, then resave it… It was very time-involved.”
— Brian Stauffer, Global Product Design Manager, JCI​

It’s no surprise that 71% of engineering leaders say they don’t use PLM at all during new product development.
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Source: CoLab Report – The Impact of Design Review

Why this matters now

What used to be seen as a “process inefficiency” is now a regulatory liability.

If the systems your team uses for supplier collaboration can’t guarantee access control, traceability, and review integrity—you’re not just wasting time. You’re opening the door to risk.

And here’s the kicker: even if IT sets up secure systems, engineers will go around them if they slow work down. That’s why the solution needs to be both secure and usable—or it won’t be used.

“You don’t just need to share the data—you need to enable the entire design review. Otherwise, teams will work around the system, and that’s how you end up with IP vulnerabilities.”
— Adam Keating, CEO, CoLab​

Access control at scale: the foundation of secure collaboration

Before we talk about the review experience, let’s talk about what makes it possible: access control.

The challenge isn’t just setting it up once—it’s keeping it up to date. According to ASML, one of the world’s most advanced engineering organizations, their PLM team makes over 100 permission changes per day just to keep up with:

• New employees joining
  
• Team members changing roles
  
• Departing employees needing access revoked
  (Source: “Secure Engineering Collaboration at ASML,” Siemens Realize Live 2023)
  

Now imagine layering on a separate tool for supplier collaboration. One that isn’t tied to your internal identity system. That’s double the provisioning work—and double the risk.

“Giving the right people access—and only the right people—is hard. Doing it in two systems is harder.”

It’s easy to see why teams often try to consolidate everything in PLM—even if it wasn’t designed for collaborative reviews.

How CoLab solves the access control problem

CoLab is designed to extend and enforce your existing access policies—not replace them.

• Attribute-based access control (ABAC): Define access rules based on metadata and user attributes
  
• Active Directory integration: Sync users and roles through your identity provider
  
• Just-in-time (JiT) provisioning: Automatically assign the right permissions when users are created
  
• Granular roles at every level: Company, workspace, and portal roles control upload, view, download, and comment rights
  
• Download-disabled by default
  

The result? Enterprise-grade access control, automatically enforced at scale—without doubling IT’s workload.

What a secure design review actually looks like

Solving access control is only half the equation. Once the right people are in, you also need to support how they collaborate—because if the system makes it hard to work, users will work around it.

Here’s how CoLab enables secure, scalable, end-to-end design reviews:

🔍 View and explore models in the browser — no downloads required

With CoLab, reviewers can:

• View 3D CAD and 2D drawings directly in the browser
  
• Use tools like pan, orbit, section, measure, and explode
  
• Fully understand the design—without downloading anything
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Why it matters:
If a file is never downloaded, it can’t be re-shared or stored locally. Just revoke access in CoLab and you're covered.

📌 Pin feedback to geometry, not slides

No more emailing screenshots or exporting CAD viewer markups:

• Comments are pinned directly to model geometry
  
• Each one includes a saved view state and a discussion thread
  
• Every comment has its own shareable URL
  

Feedback stays contextual, traceable, and centralized.

✅ Automatically track and manage comments

Every comment becomes a structured issue that you can:

• Assign to an owner
  
• Sort by status, priority, or file
  
• Track across reviews, suppliers, or workspaces

This eliminates the need for spreadsheet trackers and ensures feedback is followed through—not lost in inboxes.

🔄 Stay aligned with PLM—without forcing everything into it

CoLab integrates with your PLM system to detect and surface new file revisions:

• Alerts reviewers if they’re looking at an outdated version
  
• Enables side-by-side revision comparisons
  
• Links feedback to the correct version history
  

All without forcing review work into PLM—CoLab complements your existing system while keeping data secure and in sync.

A better path forward for engineering and IT

Engineering leaders want to move faster and collaborate globally.
IT and PLM leaders want tight control over who sees what—and when.
CoLab makes both possible.

It gives engineers a system they’ll actually use—and gives IT a system they can trust.

Ready to see it in action?

If your team is still managing design reviews through FTP, email, or overloaded PLM systems, you’re not just behind the curve—you’re assuming unnecessary risk.

Let’s fix that.

Book a call with a CoLab product expert

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