“Companies are moving to a more collaborative way of doing business resulting in an increased flow of data between parties both internal and external to the organization.” – Marcia Kaufman & Daniel Kirsch, Enterprise Collaboration: Avoiding the Productivity and Control Trade-Of  

Today’s business owners are quick to jump on the “bandwagon” to be in the Cloud. Unfortunately, many fail to realize the risks involved in the “bandwagon” approach…

“Unless enterprises have a strategy to protect data that moves across boundaries, the organization may be at risk. Therefore, protecting at the file level is needed in order to protect information wherever it travels.” – Marcia Kaufman & Daniel Kirsch, Enterprise Collaboration: Avoiding the Productivity and Control Trade-Of  

One thing is for sure – business owners have become increasingly aware of the need to protect their business-critical documents. But with an increasing number of file-storage and sharing options, today’s business owners are faced with the daunting task of choosing the one that best fits their needs. They often overlook the importance of the document sharing process associated with their platform choice. The choice to store their business-critical documents, often containing sensitive financial information, on a document sharing platform with insufficient security parameters could potentially expose a business to substantial security risks.

Dropbox – Not the Ideal Solution for Sharing Business-Critical Documents

One particular document storage and sharing solution that has cemented its place in the consumer market is Dropbox. Dropbox offers individuals with a tremendously cheap means to store and share documents. However, a major issue with Dropbox, which is also its biggest pitfall, is that it’s not the ideal solution for sharing business-critical financial transaction documents. When you share a document from Dropbox, you basically share a link to a file. Once you share this link, you lose all control of the document. Anyone can share that link further. What’s more, you won’t have the means to know, or control, the many different people that document has potentially been shared with.

Many companies these days are beginning to block the use of Dropbox. They are recognizing the potential threats associated with the perpetual sharing of document links without an effective means to control and track access. This loss of control over sensitive documents could land documents and important company information in the wrong hands, introduce significant risks, and/or financially destabilize a company.

Virtual Data Rooms – Ensuring the Safety of your Business-Critical Files

For over 15 years, virtual data rooms (VDRs) have been the industry standard for the secure exchange of transaction-related documents. Regulatory compliance bodies, such as FINRA, expect to see the due diligence phase of a transaction conducted in a true VDR.  There are multiple reasons that a VDR has become best practice.

Virtual Data Rooms allow business owners to:

• Streamline the collection and organization of documents on a highly-secure cloud platform
• Assign security clearance levels to users to control access to specific files
• Specify view only, printing and download permissions by file and user
• Place dynamic watermarks on each viewed and/or printed page of a document to further ensure document security
• Establish time frames for user access
• Monitor the login activity of every user
• Gain valuable insights from all tracked user and document activity in the data room and easily know who, when, where, and how many times each document has been accessed
• Easily adhere to compliance requirements
• Carefully track every file upload, change, and deletion
• Provide a seamless experience to their clients through a branded and integrated virtual data room

In essence, Virtual Data Rooms provide business owners with the security and comfort they need to carry on their day-to-day operations without having to worry about the safety of their business-critical documents or sacrifice efficiency.

The NEED for Additional Security

To summarize, virtual data rooms offer the average business owner with the level of security and control they NEED to keep their business-critical files safe from any potential threats. Although Dropbox is a significantly useful tool for the storage of non-critical files, like photos and recipes, business owners need to consider safer and more sustainable virtual data room options when choosing a platform to store and monitor files containing business-critical information.

About Vault Rooms

For more than 13 years, Vault Rooms has been an industry-leading cloud-based virtual data room provider. Vault Rooms has proudly facilitated tens of thousands of global M&A transactions across a wide range of industries for a variety of clients – including business brokers, investment bankers, accountants, attorneys, private equity firms, and banks. Vault Rooms’ virtual data rooms enable worldwide clients 24/7/365, to safely collect, organize, share and track business-critical documents on the Vault Rooms platform.

About the Author

Karen Perkins is the CEO and Co-Founder of Vault Rooms, Inc. She is a troubleshooter, problem solver, and efficiency expert. Her career experiences have provided a broad foundation of skills that make her uniquely qualified to assist companies with their growth, transition, and operational improvement. She advocates for the use of simple and secure technology tools designed to make work and life easier with the Super S.M.A.R.T. Women platform. Likewise, her company, Vault Rooms, is a technology platform for the simple and secure sharing of business-critical files.