Do you use Dropbox for sharing files with others in your company? If so, you might wonder how secure a tool it is for businesses. With up to 2 GB of free cloud (online) storage and the ability to easily share files with others, it has a lot going for it. And if that's not enough, you can subscribe to paid versions that can give you as much as 1 TB or more space.
But how secure is it? This has become an important question with the recent announcement that Dropbox was hacked. (See the story here.) In addition, some Dropbox users have had individual accounts hacked because they used the same passwords for Dropbox they used for other sites. Once these passwords were stolen from the other sites, hackers started using them to break into sites like Dropbox that used the same passwords. Dropbox strongly encourages you to use different passwords for different sites.
But outside hackers aren't the only risk. One potential issue has to do with the way permissions are assigned. Let's suppose you create one Dropbox folder for your business associates and another for your accountant. You don't want your business associates to be able to see financial data meant for your accountant. If you've set up permissions properly this works fine, but it's easy to make a mistake and accidentally share files with people you don't want to.
Another issue is what happens when one of your business associates leaves your company? You would like to immediately stop them from having any access to company data. But this isn't as easy as you might think. The way Dropbox is designed, it stores copies of shared files on each individual user's computer. This makes it much faster to access the files and makes them available even if you aren't online. But this means that if you delete the master copy from Dropbox it doesn't immediately get deleted from each individual computer. People could have access to files long after they have left your company. Something to keep in mind before sharing sensitive data.
Finally, if your files are subject to government regulations, think twice about using Dropbox. It isn't, for example, HIPAA compliant, so don't use it to share medical files.
Dropbox can be very useful if you know its limitations, but it's not the total solution. If you're not sure how to proceed, TeamLogic IT can help you choose the right solution for your needs.
