Secure data rooms are an online collaboration software platform that helps streamline due diligence, speeding up timelines in M&A and other deals while ensuring complete security. It lets both selling and buy-side teams to manage transactions’ entire lifecycle from beginning to end in a safe manner.
What is different about a secure digital room against file sharing websites like Dropbox is that it’s typically more targeted towards enterprises with the possibility of grouping users, set strict permissions and gain insights into usage through analytics (e.g. when, how and from where the data is accessed. Many have advanced features, like the ability to prevent downloading and copying (a big no-no) or displaying documents in a way that can’t be screenshotted. Many utilize industry-leading encryption to encrypt sensitive information and use multi-factor authentication to ensure that the person trying to log in is actually the one who is trying to gain access.
The most secure data rooms allow download of documents for offline viewing in PDF format. But, if users print these files onto physical printers or allow them to save them to file drivers for different purposes, they are not protected by the same protection that is applied to the original data in the virtual data room.
If you can download these files from a room or another system and then open them without access to the Internet is not a good idea. This is not what you want from an online data room to save sensitive documents for M&A due-diligence and litigation compliance and other documents that are sensitive. These documents need to be stored on devices and not sent to servers. This is why we suggest using a DRM solution that locks documents to devices instead of to servers which makes it impossible for you to remove them from devices or share them.