Virtual Data Rooms: A Safe and Secure Way to Store Business Data

Just like millions of other businesses in the world, your major concern would be how to keep your business data safe from data breaches and cybercriminals. Your product prototypes, business plans, licenses, marketing plans, financial statements, and other sensitive documents need a secure place like virtual data rooms.

Data security and online data room software have become synonyms. What is so special about virtual data room software, and why is the business fraternity rapidly shifting to this technology? 

Read on to explore the data room world and why it is important for your business data protection. However, before moving to data room safety, here is an introduction to VDRs.

What is a virtual data room?

If a virtual data room is defined in the simplest words, it is a secure, certified, cloud-based digital document repository for data storage, data management, online collaboration, and deal management. Here is a complete breakdown of the definition.

Data management

The core function of online data room software is to provide data storage and management services. You can store your documents in VDRs, share them with other users, edit them in real time, and organize them in your preferred manner.

Online collaboration

The second most important function of a virtual data room is to provide online collaboration tools. Using these tools, the users in the data room can easily exchange documents, start one-to-one or group conversations, arrange online business meetings, organize live Q&A sessions, create live polls, and communicate via public chat threads.

Deal management

The third main function of data room software is technically a combination of data management and online collaboration, which makes VDRs a great platform for deal management. Businesses use VDRs to manage documents and communicate safely during business transactions like fundraising, mergers, acquisitions, joint ventures, strategic partnerships, project bidding, capital raising, and real estate transaction management.

You can find more data here on the role of VDRs in deal management and business transactions.

Why is a virtual data room a secure way to store your business data?

1. Secure data backup

The first major difference between an ordinary online data repository and virtual data rooms is the latter is hosted by certified vendors. These service providers are certified by international and local cyber security institutes. For example, ISO 27001, ISO 27081, SSAE 16, SOC2, FINRA, GDPR, etc., are some most notable data room certifications.

Furthermore, all high-end data room services maintain multi-location data servers with 99.5% uptime. It makes sure that you have 24/7 access to your corporate documents and backup is kept on different servers, minimizing the chance of data loss.

2. Unique data room security

It would take a Herculean effort to break into a virtual data room because of its security features. Here is what makes VDRs so secure.

• Two-factor authorization. Two-factor authorization is the first barrier for hackers because only the right password and one-time generated secret code (sent to the user’s email address or mobile number) will let the user in.

• Remote device deletion. If a logged-in device is found in irregular activities or hacked, the data room administration can immediately remove that device from the VDR and purge all the data in it.

3. Document security

Virtual data rooms provide additional security layers to protect documents and data inside them. Here is how.

• Document access control. In your virtual data room, you can restrict one or multiple users from accessing a folder, section, document, or even a page in any document. The view-only document mode makes sure that no user can edit, share, save, download, or print that document.

• Digital watermarks. If users want to protect their documents from being copied or altered, they can add digital watermarks to them. Digital or dynamic watermarks help with tracing any changes made in the document and make it impossible to remove the ownership of a document.

• File tracking and document access revocation. It is one of the most useful features of a virtual data room. File tracker allows you to keep track of any document, changes made in it, and which user is currently using the file. The VDR admin or file owner can revoke access to any document without prior notice. The file will be shredded from the device even if it is downloaded.
• Fence view mode. The view-only feature makes sure that no user can edit, overwrite, save, share, print, or download any document; fence view mode goes one step ahead. It prevents anyone from taking a screenshot or picture of that file; it also prevents document scanning. Fence view mode is more helpful when you present data to external parties.

Apart from that, VDRs provide detailed VDR reporting, customizable NDAs, and many other security features.

Final Words

Possessing bank-grade security systems, modern-day virtual data rooms are highly trustable for online data storage, sharing, and management. Some of the best virtual data room security features are mentioned above.

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