A secure data room is an online collaboration platform that streamlines due diligence, speeding up timelines in M&A and other deals while providing ironclad security. It allows sell-side and buy-side teams to manage the full process from start to finish with confidence.

What is it that sets a secure data space against file sharing websites like Dropbox is that it's usually more targeted towards enterprises with the possibility of grouping users, set strict permissions and gain insights into the use of your data through analytics (e.g. the time, date and location your data is being accessible). Some also come with more advanced features such as the ability to prevent the downloading and copying of data (a major no-no) or even displaying documents on a screen which cannot be captured. Many of them use industry-leading encryption to encrypt sensitive data and multi-factor authentication in order to ensure that the user trying to log in is the one who is trying to gain access.

The majority of secure datarooms allow users to download PDF files to view offline. However, if you allow users print these files onto physical printers or let them save them to file drivers for other reasons, they will https://getdataroom.com/reasons-for-of-usage-data-room-software/ lose the security that is applied to the original data within the virtual data room.

If you are able to extract the downloaded files from the data room or other systems and open them on a computer, without connecting to the Internet this is a complete denial of the reason to use a secure data room for M&A due diligence, litigation, compliance and other documents that are sensitive and need to be locked to devices and not transferring to servers. We recommend a DRM-based system that locks files to devices instead of servers. This makes it impossible for you to remove them from devices and then share them.