The basic description of a virtual data room is that it is an online storage solution for information and documents, rather like the digital equivalent of a filing cabinet, but that doesn’t really do it justice or begin to describe the potential benefits.
Here is a look at what a virtual data room can offer and what potential advantages it can offer to how you run and organize your business and protect confidential documents.
A trusted solution
Virtual data rooms have been around long enough now to have gained a good reputation for being a reliable and viable solution for storing and sharing all sorts of documentation, from sensitive financial data to critical case files.
A virtual data room also offers a number of useful security protocols and features, such as detailed activity tracking, which provides detailed information on who has accessed each document.
What a virtual data room provides is a modern solution to document security in the form of a digital equivalent of this physical fortress using cloud software and technology.
How document sharing has evolved
The new millennium heralded the arrival of virtual data rooms as a worthy rival to physical document storage and security options and nearly twenty years later the transition to an online solution has become firmly accepted across all business and industry sectors.
The idea initially started out as a secure way of providing access to sensitive documents and virtual data rooms are now perceived as a trusted document sharing security solution.
What does a virtual data room offer?
There are several key points to consider when evaluating the advantages offered by a virtual data room, one of them being the peace of mind that comes with the understanding that commercially sensitive data is being stored and handled in a secure way.
Aside from the technological advantages in comparison to the requirement for a certain amount of physical space in your office in order to store hard copies of the documents, it’s hard to put a price on being secure in the knowledge that confidential information can only be accessed by those that are permitted to see it.
In addition to the enhanced security protocols offered by a virtual data room, there is also the fact that you will have the ability to upload large volumes of data at a time and have control over setting user permissions as you see fit.
Being able to track and audit who has seen each individual document and controlling who sees what is much easier to achieve with a virtual data room setup than handing over a bundle of documents.
Useful across a wide range of industries
To give you an idea of who might want to use a virtual data room and why here is a look at a few different types of business and how they might use this online option.
Lawyers are always required to handle sensitive and privileged data on behalf of clients and often have to handle the task of sharing with other parties and members of the legal team. Sharing this documentation via a virtual data room provides the ability to share this information in a controlled and protective way.
Another example of where a virtual data room facility could be used is when a corporation has the need to share confidential documents and bypass the usual firewall arrangements. The data room enables them to easily share these sensitive documents with a high degree of security.
Basically, whenever you have the need to share confidential information with another party a virtual data room provides that facility in a secure environment.
Specialized security and control features
You might be wondering how different a virtual data room is in comparison to the various file-sharing services that are widely available.
At first glance, you might consider that services such as Google Drive and similar services can provide the same file-sharing solutions, but while they do provide an everyday solution in many circumstances they do not often have the right amount of security levels to protect your most sensitive information.
What you get with a virtual data room is a variety of enhanced and specialized control and security features, plus you can be reassured that the technology is compliant with most recognized international security standards.
It should be remembered that the basic security permission settings found across many of the standard file-sharing providers are generally viewed by software security as too weak to give you the confidence that your data cannot be accessed or shared by people you not authorized to do so.
When only the best will do
You would expect any bank or financial institution to invest heavily in security procedures and do everything possible to protect highly sensitive and confidential financial data.
What you are getting with a virtual data room, in comparative terms, is a system that offers the same level of security that these banks and financial institutions utilize to keep their client’s data safe.
This means that your data is subject to encryption protocols as an additional layer of security and to further mitigate the risk of a breach.
A cost-effective solution
It could be argued that investing in a virtual data room solution is a no-brainer, as it ticks the right boxes as a cost-effective solution when compared to the physical storage alternative.
Using a virtual data room should involve a much lower setup compared to investing in a physical data room and in addition to allocating costly office space, you will also have the ongoing expense of keeping these documents under constant surveillance.
A virtual data room should be easier to put in place and maintain.
There would seem to be distinct advantages offered by the option of a virtual data room compared to other alternative storage solutions.
Also, consider how it offers global access compared to localized viewing with physical documents, and it provides a persuasive argument in favor of seeing how it can help keep your confidential data safe.