Conducting all of your projects and transactions inside a virtual data room is a sure-fire way to ensure the security of your data and communication. Best of all, the security features offered inside virtual data rooms will not hinder your workflows and make a lot of processes more efficient. Lots of companies are using a data room in order to provide their employees and clients with a secure area to conduct business. Given all of the internal and external threats that appear all the time, it can be very difficult to be one step ahead and you can waste a lot of time and resources simply trying to defend against all of these threats. A virtual data room can take care of the security for you and give you peace of mind so you can focus on your core business functions.
While there are plenty of data room providers to choose from, the selection process can be difficult. In order to help you decide, we created a virtual data room comparison which will save you a lot of time and let you know what some of the biggest names in the industry are offering.
Our Rating of Data Room Providers in 2018-2019
The ratings are based on many factors such as security, ease of usage, innovation, customer support and features that are necessary for completing complex deals. The reason that the rankings are so detailed is that there are plenty of providers who claim to have the best security or the most user-friendly but in fact, they offer a similar set of services that can be found among other providers. This can be especially useful if you have never used a data room before and you are not sure which features are in fact innovative and which ones usually come standard.
Furthermore, since the prices will vary significantly, you must be aware of which features are worth paying for as well as what you can get for a better price Along with the prices and the features, a lot of emphases were given towards how the providers facilitate workflows and promote communication. A quality service partner will allow all participants to communicate with each other as if they were in the same room together even though they might physically be dispersed among a wide geographic area.
Why Your Business Needs a Data Room
We mentioned that there are many threats facing your documents and if you are using anything other than a data room to store all of this information you are taking risks. If you are currently using a cloud service provider such as Google Drive or Dropbox for document storage keep in mind that they do not have some of the most basic security features that can be found on a lot of data rooms out there. For example, a lot of data rooms will protect documents with watermarks that contain information such as the name of the user who accessed the document, date and time of access and their IP address. While this is a basic security feature, it discourages unauthorized information sharing since all users know that any leak can be traced back to them.
Your investment in a virtual data room will eliminate a lot of the time that is wasted simply on searching for information. Even if you found the document that you were looking for, a lot of times you will need to request the owner of the document to grant you access which can result in more time wasted. With a virtual data room, you will be able to set granular access permissions which essentially puts you in the driver’s seat as far as document management is concerned. You will be able to allow and revoke document access on a case-by-case basis, set access expiry and even shred documents remotely. The data room will even remain useful after the project is over since you will be able to use it as a central document repository.
How to Make the Right Choice Between All of the Data Room Providers
Free trial period and tutorial
The first thing that you should look for when making a decision is whether or not it is possible to get a free trial period and tutorial of the data room. The reason for this is because the only way to find out if a particular data room will be a good fit is to input some of your own data and play around inside it. This will give you a feeling for all of the features and allow you to better judge whether or not the data room is easy to use and is suitable for the long term. Also, you will notice that a lot of providers are offering free demos to show you everything the data room is capable of. Certain data rooms offer a ton of features and it might be difficult figuring out how to use them all by yourself. It will also give you a great opportunity to ask all of your questions and have them answered on the spot.
Flexibility
The next thing you should look for is flexibility. This includes flexibility to add participants, use more storage and pricing plans. Be on the lookout for providers that give you the option to pay only for what you use. This will allow you to start using the data room gradually to get accustomed to it without having to choose a pricy plan. Speaking of the pricing options, some of the pricing plans will cost more, but usually it worth paying the price in order to get flexibility. For example, higher-priced plans will give unlimited data, the possibility to add participants in the middle of the deal and anything else your deal requires.
Find Secure Data Room Software With Our Virtual Data Room Reviews
Data room software protects your documents by limiting the individuals who have access to them. Some data room providers allow you to achieve fine levels of granularity with innovative features such as secure spreadsheet viewing. For example, let’s say that you need to upload an Excel spreadsheet into the data room, but you do not want certain participants to see the formulas that were used during the calculation. You will be able to restrict this information without restricting access to the entire spreadsheet itself. This is a great example of an innovative security feature that allows you to achieve minute levels of granularity.
You will see a lot of providers claiming that they protect your documents from all kinds of threats, but they fail to take into account a very basic threat: camera-based attacks. Corporate espionage is on the rise and if somebody really wants to get a hold of certain information they can simply take a picture of the computer screen with their phone. Some data rooms offer “Fence View” which is an innovative feature that serves as a physical barrier between the user and the document and helps prevent camera-based attacks. The data room reviews contain comprehensive information about some of the biggest providers out there and will allow you to make a better decision in terms of which ones will give you the most value for your money.