How To: Share Sensitive Files with a Third Party

You need to share a document, video or audio file with a third party, but the files are filled with sensitive information. What options should you consider?

Three possibilities come to mind: email, Dropbox or flash drive.

Sending an email is the same thing as sending a postcard through US Mail. Email remains wide open when it comes to security or lack there of. This is true and scary; anyone who wants to read your email (not just the NSA) can read your email.

Most times you can send sensitive documents through email and nothing will happen – roll of the dice really. However; you are playing Russian roulette (almost literally, given a recent theft of 1.2 billion email account credentials by a Russian gang). Remember, the topic of this post is about sharing sensitive data with a third party.

The next option would encrypting the email attached in the email. Encryption is a great option and certainly more secure than sending the email without encryption. You could run into a file size limitation though. Most videos will be larger than a 20MB, which is (generally) the maximum file size one could attached in an email. Encryption is a good next step, but there is a bigger issue at hand than file size. More about that in a few.

Dropbox is the next option on our list for how to share sensitive data with a third party. Dropbox is a great option when you have larger files. With Dropbox you could upload those big audio or video files and provide a download link for your recipient. Dropbox doesn’t encrypt your data by default so there is some exposure there. A quick and relatively safe method to encrypt your files using Windows would be compressing the video into a zip file and assigning it a password. Encrypting the data will provide that extra layer of security. As with an encrypted email, the encrypted Dropbox alternative also has a major flaw.

Ask yourself, “Do you trust the person receiving the document?”

If you cannot answer that question with absolute certainty, then sending sensitive documents to a third party using encryption is not the most secure method. It is important to understand, with encryption the files are secure while in transit from the sender to the recipient, but once the recipient puts in the password to decrypt the file, they can do anything they want with it. When the password decrypts the file, all the security goes away. When dealing with legal matters and sharing sensitive data with third parties, a major criteria will be to insure the file cannot be changed, manipulated or put into the wrong hands. With that in mind, copy protection is the better alternative for sharing sensitive data.

It is important to understand the difference between encryption and copy protection. Both technologies use encryption to protect the file, the big difference is trust of the user for the protected file. With encryption the only security feature is the password. Encryption is great for protecting files when the user is in your circle of trust. Think of your computer back-up files stored on a USB flash drive and that drive is dropped in a parking lot by mistake. Anyone who found the drive could not view the data because the data is encrypted with a password. They could not see your back-up files unless the correct password was entered.

Let us change the scenario just a little.

In this scenario, sensitive files are to be shared with a third party whom you don’t necessarily trust. It is important the files have a password to insure only the intended recipient can view the files and in addition, you need security to make sure the recipient cannot save the files, print the files, stream, share, upload or export the files. By changing the situation to this scenario one can see the value with copy protection is greater than the value of encryption. As with copy protection, the file can only be viewed, nothing else can be done with the file.

The last option from our original list is the USB flash drive.

As with email and Dropbox, one could encrypt the files and place them on a flash drive and send to the third party. But as we just discussed and highlighted, encryption is not the best solution for this situation. A Copy Secure flash drive which provides USB copy protection is the best alternative for this situation. The Copy Secure flash drive is manufactured by Nexcopy and carries a variety of features specifically designed for sharing files with “not so trusted” recipients.

Copy Secure flash drives offer copy protection on USB sticks

The Copy Secure flash drive is write protected after the data is put on the drive. This means the flash drive is read-only. It is impossible to format the drive, delete the files on the drive or manipulate the files on the drive. The write protection feature is done at the hardware controller level, it is not a software solution, which means the most secure method for locking the device. The files on the drive are encrypted. A viewer application runs from the flash drive for either a Windows computer or Mac computer which displays the files. The viewer application is very secure and blocks the ability to save the file, print the file, screen capture, stream or export the files.

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What Comes After the Dead Optical Drive?

Let’s face it, optical discs are large and bulky. At nearly five inches in diameter, the discs are big when compared to the size of modern laptops and now tablets. Even though the optical drives has been greatly reduced in size, more and more laptops have dropped the technology to conserve on space and power.

If you are not talking about the size of the mobile computer, the space used up by an optical drive can be used for more practical things. That space could be better used for the battery which can extend the overall running time of the system. If the system is designed for performance, it could store a better or bigger solid state drive in addition to a hard drive for added performance. Maybe the computer could use a better graphics solution for graphic design or gaming.

When CD-R drives first came into the market, they offered a huge storage capacity that rivaled traditional magnetic media of the day. After all, 650 megabytes of storage was well beyond what most hard drives were at the time. DVD expanded this capacity even further with 4.7 gigabytes of storage on the recordable formats.

While the growth rate of optical media was good, it is nowhere near the exponential growth that hard drives and USB sticks have seen. Optical storage is still stuck in the gigabytes while most hard drives are pushing even more terabytes. Using the CD, DVD and Blu-ray for storing data is just not worth it anymore. The write time is too slow and the seek time to find your data is equally as slow. The hard drive and it’s portable version, USB flash drive have found the main stream masses.

Keeping these points in mind, you can see why optical media is all but dead. Sure, the CD-R and DVD-R will last another year, probably another five, but it’s USB and hard drives which have taken over. The next step in the logical progression, is how to data load USB media? With optical media you had CD and DVD tower duplicators. There are many systems with robotics and printers so duplicate to the optical media and also print a label. But those systems are getting harder and harder to find.

The equipment most companies and organizations are seeking now are USB duplicators. These are flash memory copier systems which can data load content to USB flash drives at ultra-fast speeds. CD and DVD duplicators went through some phases of supported formats like discs being finalized or disc-at-once over track-at-once. Well, USB duplicators have a similar issue to resolve. There is file copy and binary copy and duplication from an ISO file or an IMG file. There are many ways to copy the data from the source to the target USB media.

It’s important to have a USB duplicator which supports all these functions. There are some duplicators with as many as six copy modes. A system like this makes it extremely versatile for the user to move data around. There is file copy, copy add, unique data streaming, copy from a physical device, copy from an IMG file, copy from an ISO file. These are all great resources to have if you are not sure how the content is being given to you.

USB-C Duplicator by Nexcopy Inc.

In a recent news press release from Nexcopy Inc., it appears USB Type C is trending up for consumer demand.

Via the EIN News Wire Service, Nexcopy announced a twenty target USB-C Duplicator. Some of the information posted in the release talks about the upward trend manufacturers are seeing with USB type C product. In addition, the production of a mass aggregator, or duplicator, is another indication users are data loading, in bulk, to USB-C product.

“Apple computers and Iot, or Internet Of Things, are driving the force behind the increased demand for USB-C flash drive consumption. Although the internet is great for many data sharing applications, there is still a great need for data dissemination off line. USB is still the definitive choice among users to share data via flash memory,” states Greg Morris, President of Nexcopy.

Morris continues, “We see the demand of USB-C duplication to only rise in the coming years. In technology, smaller is always better, and as devices get slimmer in size the USB type A socket will eventually phase out and USB type C taking over. The transition is slow, but it is inevitable; and with that said, we are ready – today.”

Nexcopy is also well known for the PRO series duplicators that perform advanced functions to flash drives, such as USB write protection (USB read-only), partitions at the controller level, and serial number control for UFD identification. From the press release, these advanced functions will also be available on the USB-C200PC duplicator.

The USB-C duplicator has a list price of $1,299 from what we understand and available now through a list of on-line retails like Amazon and NewEgg. The product is also available through a worldwide network of authorized resellers.

Nexcopy did allude to