Looking at the multi-billion dollar revenue opportunity, many vendors claiming to be Enterprise File Sync & Share (EFSS) providers have emerged. Most of them focus only on the end-user features but lack the enterprise security, controls and visibility required by businesses to ensure protection from data loss, security and compliance risks.
This is part 2 of the “Comparing Top 5 Enterprise File Sync and Share (EFSS) and Mobile Collaboration Solutions” series of posts, where we are comparing Vaultize with Accellion, Citrix ShareFIle, EMC Syncplicity and Watchdox – which we believe have enterprise-grade controls and have also found place in Gartner’s EFSS Magic Quadrant. In this series, we will do the comparisons mainly from an enterprise IT perspective; from the end-user perspective, all the solutions are almost at par.
Holistic Approach
The first and biggest advantage of Vaultize is the information-centric holistic platform approach towards security, control and visibility through built-in data loss prevention (DLP), digital rights management (DRM), data protection (backup/restore) and enterprise mobility management (EMM) capabilities. This means, irrespective of how the corporate content is being accessed, used (for example, edit and annotate) or shared by the end-users and irrespective of the device being used, everything complies with the IT defined policies, ensuring corporate compliance – even when the content goes beyond the corporate boundaries and to the devices beyond IT control. In this regard, Accellion’s approach is short sighted and significantly lacks these capabilities.
Security
Vaultize performs military-grade AES 256-bit encryption together with content-aware smart de-duplication at source (that is, on the end-user device itself) before transmitting the data - without solely relying on SSL (because SSL is prone to attacks). This effectively builds a secure tunnel and provides source-to-destination and cradle-to-grave security. As a result, VPN, which leads to poor and frustrating end-user experience, is not required for access, sharing and mobility. Accellion relies solely on SSL for encrypting the communication channel and encrypts the actual data only when it reaches the server.
Access Controls and Tracking
Vaultize provides corporate IT complete control on the access to corporate content at the level of a user, data source and the type of data. With Vaultize Rights Management (DRM), the access rights travel along with the data ensuring that corporate IT has full control and tracking on access and use (like edit, copy/paste, print etc.) of data even when it goes to third-parties. Additionally, IT can create security fence around corporate data such that it is accessible or usable only from certain IPs and/or geographical locations. Accellion provides no such controls, rights management or tracking.
Sharing Controls
Both Accellion and Vaultize provide IT with good controls over sharing. Vaultize gives additional controls in terms of with whom the documents can be shared (like IP ranges, domains, geographical locations) and also provides ability to enforce information rights even after the files are downloaded by third-party (DRM aka IRM).
Mobility Management Controls
Both Accellion and Vaultize provide Mobility Management controls. This means for BYOD, the customer may not necessarily need Mobile Device Management (MDM) to be deployed. Also, both vendors integrate with popular MDM solutions.
Data Loss Prevention (DLP) and Data Protection
Vaultize provides endpoint DLP capabilities (encryption and remote wiping) for both mobile devices and non-mobile devices like laptops and desktops, while Accellion does it only for mobile devices. Vaultize encrypts files and folders on Windows laptops/desktops to protect data from unauthorized access and, ability to remotely wipe in case the device is compromised, lost or stolen. The remote wiping also works automatically based on IP and geographical location.
Vaultize provides IT to define data protection policies to regularly backup not only simple files but also open and large-size files like Outlook PST. That means wherever the corporate contents are, they are fully protected, irrespective of whether they are being accessed and shared. Accellion provides versioning only for shared files.
Efficiency
Vaultize performs content-aware smart de-duplication across all the users and devices in the organization. This significantly reduces the network traffic as well as the storage requirement at the server. Global de-duplication plays an important role in making data transfer efficient when the end-user is roaming beyond corporate perimeter on a low bandwidth network. This, along with no-VPN, enormously improves end-user experience. Accellion has very limited de-duplication capabilities.
End-user Features
Accellion’s third-party sharing is very inflexible wherein it requires recipient to register with server before the shared data can be accessed or downloaded unlike secure links of Vaultize, which can be easily accessed by the recipient. Vaultize Desktop sync and Group Collaboration (sharing with managed users) are feature rich allowing individuals flexibility to selectively sync, share, collaborate and control (using DRM) as per their need.
Lastly, Vaultize provides an additional deployment option - purpose-built appliance series, in addition to private-cloud/on-premise and public-cloud.
Overall, Vaultize is built on a holistic information-centric approach where corporate content is completely under IT control and visibility irrespective of where it is, who uses it and from which device. Rather than binding an end-user to a specific device, it provides anywhere, anytime and any-device access, use, sharing and control of data – enhancing user experience and productivity.
Look at Why Vaultize to know the reasons why enterprise IT loves us. Contact us for more information or directly ask for free trial. Also you can download a free virtual appliance with 10-user perpetual license.