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 5 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.
We have already compared Accellion, EMC Syncplicity and Watchdox giving a perspective on why Vaultize is superior over each of them. In this post, we compare Vaultize with Citrix ShareFile.
Holistic Approach
The first and biggest advantage of Vaultize over any of the competition is the information-centric holistic platform approach towards security, control and visibility through built-in enterprise digital rights management (DRM), data loss prevention (DLP), 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 by them (company provided or personally owned), 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. This is the first and foremost reason why large enterprises – even in highly regulated and security-conscious verticals – trust Vaultize.
In this context, ShareFile’s (acquired by Citrix in 2011) approach is short sighted and significantly lacks these security, DRM, and data loss prevention capabilities. For mobility management ShareFile is integrated with XenMobile, an MDM product of Citrix (acquired in 2013), which means two separate products to manage for IT.
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 is Vault KNOX, a patent pending technology of Vaultize that 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. Vaultize further adds a level of security by DRM-encrypting the files to manage the rights even after the data is shared and downloaded by third-party.
Citrix ShareFile relies solely on SSL (i.e. needs VPN or additional tunnelling) for encrypting the communication channel to secure data from source to server to destination. For mobility, it uses application specific micro VPN of XenMobile to secure the channel – increasing the total cost of ownership and also the complexity of the solution/deployment.
Access Controls and Tracking
Vaultize provides corporate IT with complete control on access to corporate content at the level of a user, data source and the type of data. With Vaultize Digital 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(s) around corporate data such that it is accessible or usable only from certain IPs and/or geographical locations.
Citrix ShareFile provides no such controls, rights management or tracking – and even does not integrate with any third-party DRM solutions. This is a significant disadvantage for Citrix ShareFile when competing against Vaultize in regulated and security-sensitive verticals.
Online Document Viewer
Both Citrix ShareFile and Vaultize offer an Online Document Viewer for viewing of shared files within the web browser itself while allowing IT to control things like copy-paste, printing, screenshots and email. It enables IT to apply content/information level controls on data, going beyond simple file or folder-level controls. Text, image or email based digital watermarking further reduces chances of data leakage.
Sharing Controls
Both Citrix ShareFIle 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).
Outlook Plugin
Both Citrix ShareFile and Vaultize provide Microsoft Outlook plugin for policy-based control on email attachments thereby converting the attachments into secure links with additional controls like password and expiry.
Additionally, Vaultize provides policy-based control to DRM-encrypt the document and also allow individual users to apply additional restrictive DRM rights – a significant advantage for businesses in regulated and security-conscious verticals.
Further, Vaultize’s content-aware global de-duplication based on Vault KNOX technology frees up email storage (both in PST/mailbox and email server) and reduces network bandwidth. All shared files are securely stored only once on Vaultize server/cloud and a link is automatically inserted in the email. Hence Vaultize can significantly reduce the cost of storage – particularly the high-end storage used for Exchange Server.
Mobility Management Controls
Vaultize provides many Mobility Management controls embedded in the platform. Citrix ShareFile relies on XenMobile, another product from Citrix for mobility management controls.
Data Loss Prevention and Data Protection
Vaultize provides endpoint DLP capabilities (encryption and remote wiping) for both mobile devices and PCs (laptops and desktops), while Citrix ShareFile 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 (endpoint backup) 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. Citrix ShareFile provides versioning only for shared files and does not support open files.
Efficiency
Vaultize performs content-aware smart de-duplication across all the users and devices in the organization using Vault KNOX technology. 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 and hence the productivity. Citrix ShareFile has very limited de-duplication capabilities.
End-user Features
Both Citrix ShareFile and Vaultize have good consumer-like end-user UI/UX, while providing security and administrative controls to IT without negatively impacting the end-user experience.
Deployment Options
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 with advanced administrative controls not available with any competition. 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.