File security and sharing have become a wholly unrecognizable beast when compared to the early days of the internet. Back in the days of ARPANET, you were lucky to crunch a few megabytes of math. Today? The data we share and store is massive, important, and personal. This means that your file-sharing services need to take your privacy and security seriously. How can you find a secure file-sharing service? How can you protect your data online in the modern era?
There are three major principles every file-sharing service must be built to uphold. Your privacy, security, and control are on the line every time you share a file, so your file-sharing service should be up to these three challenges.
Security
Above everything else, your file-sharing service must be secure. Without security measures in place, a file-sharing service is nothing more than a dumping ground for your personally identifying information.
These days we send and receive personally identifying information, and crucial work-related documents. In the past, the internet was slow and cumbersome, to a certain degree, this sluggish handicap acted as a security feature. By deterring our desire to send and receive delicate information, users of the early internet hardly had to worry about a hacker plucking a photocopy of their driver’s license out of an email server, simply because this was not common practice.
Now that we live in a world powered by incredible processing power and effortless communication, the practice of communicating private data via the internet has become much more common. Our trust in the internet has opened millions of users up to crippling data breaches. Continuing to rely on outdated file-sharing methods not only hamstring your ability to share large files, but it also creates a dangerous hole in your security.
To protect yourself, start by looking for a file-sharing service that will protect your files with top-tier security both in transit and in storage. A file-sharing service should encrypt your data from end to end. End-to-end encryption will ensure two things. First, that intercepted data is unusable to hackers. This means that no matter how clever a hacker is, they will have no hope of peering into your information after they’ve gotten ahold of it.
Second, your files will be similarly protected once they have reached their final secure destination. A file storage system is only as strong as its weakest link. That is why secure storage systems rely on decentralized servers as well as encrypted storage methods.
Privacy
In the modern era of the internet, privacy has been constantly under threat. Where we once protected our identity during every possible interaction on the internet, we now have unimaginably accurate trails of our activity. Privacy online has become a commodity. This lack of online privacy makes it difficult to keep your information to yourself, both as a citizen and as a business.
Bad actors can take advantage of our lack of privacy to purchase and exploit information about ourselves that we had no intention of sharing. Big Tech can monitor your activity without your knowledge and claim ownership of your data without giving you to the opportunity to get a word in edgewise. When you entrust your client’s data to a file storage system, your last worry should be whether your storage service has its fingers in your folders.
Encryption has the additional benefit of giving you the power to reclaim your privacy. When your information is encrypted and your storage and sharing service has opted not to save its own encryption key, your information is truly only accessible to your business and your authorized users.
Control
Finally, your storage and sharing service should give you control. Bad actors don’t always have to be hackers. Clients and ex-employees with self-serving intentions can try to take your data and run. Sometimes your information can end up in the wrong hands all thanks to a careless keystroke. Whatever the case may be, a mistake should never come at the cost of your personal data.
To that end, file-sharing services should be built to give their users full control.
Password-protected and expiring link-based file sharing gives users additional layers of control. Password protection ensures that only an authorized recipient has access to data by adding an additional barrier once a file has been handed over to the internet. Similarly, link-based file sharing means that your data never has to sit on an under-secured third party’s server by giving recipients direct access to the location of the file shared with them, unlike email attachments. Link-based file sharing also gives users the opportunity to control when the link expires, meaning that the days of stumbling across forgotten data are in the past.
File-sharing and Storage Made for You
The team here at AXEL understands the importance of secure and comfortable file sharing. We have built our service on the three foundational principles of internet privacy and security.
AXEL-Go protects every file end-to-end with AES 256-bit encryption. We never keep any encryption keys so every business dealing, family photo, and personal file can only be accessed by an authorized user or recipient. This encryption also gives our customers total privacy by protecting their data from prying eyes both in transit and within our decentralized storage servers. Finally, we give our customers control. With expiring link shares, customizable admin privileges, and password-protected shares, AXEL-Go is a workspace that hands control over to users at every possible point.
