In the past, paperwork was only done in the physical presence of employees and potential partners, but the advent of digitalization has overturned the entrepreneur’s usual notion of business. Software is now available for virtually any purpose, and it has helped increase organizational productivity, speed up transactions and reduce human error. Nevertheless, the issue of security in the online space is still relevant. Virtual data rooms are feature-rich solutions that allow you to stay in control of your sensitive documents, no matter what happens.
What are virtual data rooms?
Virtual data rooms are professional online business tools that have been around since the early 2000s. However, the active transition to the digital space began relatively recently, and it was then that the world could truly appreciate the benefits of VDR solutions. Today, the data room market is overflowing with different offerings from dozens of providers offering solutions for various industries and businesses. VDRs are used for mergers and acquisitions, due diligence, IPOs, fundraising, investment transactions, legal and accounting, and many other purposes. The main advantage of data room software is that it offers robust security while storing, transferring, and sharing documents. In addition, they provide advanced features that track document handling and other user activities in great detail.
How does VDR enable document tracking?
The beauty of virtual data rooms is that space administrators remain in complete control, which would be difficult to achieve with physical collaboration, or using unreliable document sharing and collaboration solutions. Below we highlight the main features that allow you to monitor the actions of other users within VDRs:
- Detailed access permissions
By setting permissions to each document for each user or group of users, administrators will know who can use their data and how. For example, you can block features such as document visibility and partial visibility, copying, printing, forwarding, uploading, editing, screenshotting, and even document photography. Of course, you can make changes to the permissions settings at any time, depending on the role and responsibilities of the users.
- Watermarks
If some users have been allowed freer access to certain documents, you can still take care of their security. Watermarks are placed on any paper, ensuring data owners respect their copyrights. In addition, you can track every action performed on a document and see which user did it. This also makes it easier to identify the source of a data leak if one does occur.
- Monitoring features
Administrators can monitor user actions in the data room in real time and through audit logs. Audit logs provide administrators with automatic reports of every step inside the VDR, giving them useful analytics about each user’s involvement in your common business and detecting suspicious behavior. For example, you can see time in and out of space, time inside a document, etc.
- Progress Tracking
VDR owners can set different tasks for users and track their progress. You also set deadlines for their completion.
- Automatic notifications
Virtual Data Rooms offer users the unique ability to see the big picture. Administrators get notifications whenever someone has shared a document or downloaded it to their device. Just as easily, admins can remotely destroy data from a third-party device and block access to records.