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In the business world, a data breach can mark the end of your company, or at least make it very hard to bounce back when someone on the outside gets a hold of your confidential information. How can you stop this from happening though?
The answer is finding out how to securely send files from employee to employee which sounds easier said than done. It’s not so hard though when you choose the right software and all your employees are informed about protocol.
To give you a jump start on your research, here are a few ways that you can store your information securely on your computer and send it to various members of your team.
1. Protecting Files on Your Computer
The first step of keeping your files out of the wrong hands is making sure they are securely stored on your computer. It’s going to be different depending on which computer you’re working on so we’re going to go over both.
Mac OS
You can securely store your data on a Mac in just a couple of keystrokes. It’s a cakewalk compared to doing it on a Window’s PC. All you have to do is turn on the FileVault feature in your system preferences.
To walk you through it, you will go to system preferences, security & privacy, and FileVault. It will encrypt your entire hard drive so anyone that tries to access your files will need a password to do so.
You can even encrypt all of your flash drives. Right-click the flash drive in Finder and then choose encrypt. It’s that simple.
Windows PC
For Windows users, the process is a little more difficult. Some PCs encrypt your files automatically. You can check if yours does it in your system settings.
Not every PC does this though and for the ones that don’t, you’ll need access to BitLocker which comes with some PCs. It encrypts your computer and any external hard drives.
The problem with this is to use BitLocker you need a professional version of Windows 10 or a chip called a Trusted Platform Module which not every PC comes with. If you don’t have either of these, you’ll have to turn to third-party sources.
3. Sending Secure Documents to Others
Now that you know how to keep your files secure on your computer, it’s time to send them to co-workers. The most secure way other than just handing them to the person is to encrypt them and then send them over.
Sadly, not every person is going to have a way to decrypt them to read them or you will have to send your entire staff a password which isn’t safe. So, as you can tell, this method can be impractical. What is practical is just taking advantage of file-sharing software instead.
On the other hand, you can take full control of your documents by implementing document management software (DMS) in your system. Sharefile is a popular DMS which is used for sharing files online, you can also choose sharefile alternatives, in which the shared files remain encrypted from the beginning, and while transferring the data, it passes through the robust cloud in the world which makes it harder for the hackers to penetrate and get a hands-on the confidential data.
4. Best File Sharing Software
File Sharing software is going to be your best bet for sending over your files securely. There are a lot of them out there so we’re just going to go over a few of the best ones.
Dropbox
Dropbox is probably the best known of the data sharing software. It’s also simple to use and can send bigger files than an email. All you have to do is click share next to a file and then send off the link that it generates.
Only the people who have the link will be allowed to look at the file and you can delete that link anytime you need to. If you used the paid version of the software, you can go the extra mile and use a password to protect each file.
PGP/GPG
We know we mentioned that encrypting files to send them is a little impractical but these two programs make it practical. They allow you to get passed sending your entire staff the password to a file that you’ve encrypted. Instead, it uses a public key to encrypt documents and a private key to decrypt them.
Your private key will never leave your computer and your co-workers can use your public one to send you files. The only problem with these programs is if you aren’t exactly tech-savvy they can be a little hard to set up.
LastPass
LastPass allows you to store all of your passwords and logins in the same place. This doesn’t sound safe, but here’s the thing, you can share this login with your co-workers which allows them to log in without typing in any of your passwords or seeing them.
Again that sounds convenient but not safe but LastPass protects your connection so there is a very small chance that someone can get in and access your files the same way.
Virtual Data Room
If you go with a virtual data room you’ll be able to easily send your files with anyone else that’s a part of the data room. It sends them via a secure connection and it’s completely anonymous.
Data rooms are about as easy to use as some data software and actually pretty cost effective.
How to Securely Send Files and Keep Them Away from Prying Eyes
If your important business information gets into the wrong hands, it could break your business but there are ways for you to send your information securely. Use these tips on how to securely send files to keep them away from prying eyes.
Did you follow this guide and these options didn’t work for you? Contact us to let us know about it.
