Many of our clients, particularly our Venture Capital and Private Equity clients, need to share large amounts of sensitive information with other organizations in a secure and tracked way. This need typically arises during funding rounds, M&A due diligence, and fund raisers. Virtual data rooms let our clients determine who can view, edit, or even download specific files, and can track this activity.
Virtual data rooms have replaced email as well as the traditional physical data rooms or on-premise document management systems as the best way to share documents between organizations.
Virtual data rooms have many benefits over a traditional, physical data room, legacy document management systems, or transactional e-mails:
- Easy, simple distribution – No need to have anyone travel, no need to FedEx any documents
- Top level security – No need to worry about data breaches from storing files on your own computer or worrying about physical security on your data room, most virtual data rooms have very stringent security regulations
- Easily accessible storage – Sifting through your paper documents or emails is a daunting task, but having easily accessible and sortable folders in your data rooms allows you to not have to do any tedious digging or manual labor
- Levels of permissions – Biz Dev teams and investors come and go. Virtual data rooms allow you to seamlessly and easily manage permissions of who can and can not see or edit certain files
- Control further distribution of the data – limits on downloading files, some even can block snapshots for the most sensitive documents
Now that we’ve covered some of the benefits of having a virtual data room over a traditional data room or emailing, here are some of the virtual data rooms that Hybridge recommends for our clients. Each of the links below will provide you with more in-depth information on each particular service.
- Intralinks – The pioneer in the space, and still one of the most popular data room services within the financial community. The biggest benefit is that many people and organizations in the financial service communication already have authenticated accounts, so sharing is easy. The “premium” solution, but also comes at a “premium” price, even by VC standards
- Box - You may have already used Box for file collaboration, it also works as a virtual data room, though with more limited control capabilities than Intralinks
- Firmex – Very, very rigorous security measures. SOC 2, ISO 27001, GDPR, and HIPAA compliant. They also provide a 24/7/365 support team
- Onehub – Lowest option starts off with 1TB storage, much higher storage than most. The payment plan is sold in packages (3 users, 5 users, 6+ users) as opposed to most others which are sold by the individual user
- SecureDocs – Unlimited data storage, unlimited users, unlimited support. SecureDocs is not billed per person, but instead sold at one flat monthly rate, billed annually
- Egnyte – Offers a very easy and intuitive dashboard. Continuously and automatically backs up original and copies of files in order to easily revert to an older version
- eFileCabinet – Allows easy access on multiple devices and platforms such as mobile without compromising functionality
Most of the virtual data rooms that are available right now do offer similar functionality and Hybridge recommends that if you are already using one of these then there is no need to hop around between them unless there is a specific issue that isn’t being addressed. If you want to learn more about data rooms or are wondering if one would be a good fit for your company, feel free to contact us at info@hybridge.com or call at 888-353-1763.
