So, as we discussed, social engineering is usually the weakest link in document and IT security.

Our virtual dataroom clients frequently ask us for advice or best practices to fight social engineering.  Here are the top 6 we tell them:

1.Protect Your Passwords

This sounds like a no-brainer, but it’s not as straightforward as it sounds. People regularly give out passwords without realizing it, for reasons such as receiving a text message from the “boss” saying he has forgotten his password and can’t access his information while in an important meeting. Make it a rule for no-one to disclose a password ever, under any circumstances whatsoever. If a password is mislaid, follow secure protocols for resetting it and creating a new one.

Social engineering is probably the biggest threat for your confidential information.  We as dataroom providers spend a very significant amount of time making sure that our professionals are well versed in the tricks that can take down the most secure systems.   

"How do you as a Virtual Data provider destroy your documents?  What should I do to destroy our data?" A very good client asked us this question the other day.  

In the third of our posts about a robust security policy from a Virtual Data Room provider's perspective, let’s take a look at how you actually implement the policy.  As in other posts in these series, we are sharing with you some of the learning/policies, that we have implemented in EthosData to manage our Dataroom business.

The hardest part of the process is often rolling it out to your organization and getting employees’ buy-in and commitment to comply with it. The best intentioned projects can fall flat when it comes to the implementation phases, so you need to plan this step carefully to ensure its success.

Law firms are increasingly deploying their own Internet-based virtual data rooms (VDRs), as part of their basic document management solution. This is a good idea in theory because it keeps confidential documentation in-house, leading to a sense of greater control. It also expands the use of the VDRs beyond the relatively small number of service providers that operate facilities. Often, the firms use white-label VDR technology supplied by a vendor.

Security of your critical business data is paramount no matter if you are running a high profile transaction through a Virtual Data Room or just running your normal business transaction on a daily basis. Companies, regardless of size, rely on critical business data in order to succeed and flourish.

Its Monday ! Here we are again to stress on the importance of Security and how a  Virtual Data Room can protect and minimize potential threats to your confidential documents. The same ingenuity that brought us the technology of the information age brought us cybercrime – a new class of criminal activity that takes place entirely online. It includes security breaches, compromised intellectual property, identity theft and fraud. Business is particularly vulnerable to the Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) category of cybercrime.

What would the damage to your company be of such an attack? Safeguard  your sensitive information by understanding how APTs work and how to  protect yourself against them.

Data stored on secure IT platforms such as data rooms is sensitive, and if the wrong people access it there could be significant consequences for your company. The weakest link in the IT security chain is the human element. No matter how secure and robust your security protocols are, there always exists a genuine gap that can be breached. "Trust" and "ignorance" are the two most common human behaviours that add to this gap. People are either too trusting of others (or) they are ignorant of the consequences being careless with information. Those who wish to will do just about anything to gain access to confidential information and mostly rely on people's inability to keep up with a culture that heavily relies on information. In this post we will have a look at the various social engineering tactics that take adantage of the human behaviour and how we can effecively have a control over it .