How secure is Dropbox for a small business?
Small Business B.D. (Before Dropbox) could be a real pain:
Friday arvo backups took forever,
Copying large files to USB for sharing was a hassle, and
The stuff we did for the latest version if travelling was ridiculous!
Dropbox has, without a doubt, made life for small business teams easier.
But is it Dropbox really secure enough to rely on for everything?
How would you recover if you lost access to your Dropbox files?
One of the biggest benefits of something like Dropbox is the promise of having access to all your files no matter where you are. This has been a game changer for a stack of businesses enabling new processes and ways for teams to work together.
The more we rely on Dropbox, the bigger the impact will be if the files disappear.
While Dropbox does a lot to limit the chances of losing files there are still ways for things to go missing:
A local copy of a folder is moved or deleted
Files or folders are deleted or moved in the online dashboard
Someone out to get you gets access to your account and simply deletes it
Dropbox, or your Internet provider, goes down
Here are a couple of things you might want to look into to reduce the chances of these things impacting you:
Make sure your account is well secured with a strong password and 2-factor authentication.
Check to see if your plan includes Dropbox Rewind and consider upgrading if it doesn’t.
Keep a separate copy of anything really important to your business somewhere else (e.g. using a Cloud Backup service)
Plan for an outage happens so you and your team know what to do when one happens.
Would you know if your Dropbox files were changed?
Having the latest copy of a document synced everywhere is fantastic, but only if that copy is what you expect it to be. How can you be sure none of the following things has happened to your Dropbox files?
One of your team’s devices is hit with ransomware and the encrypted files have synced with Dropbox.
Someone you’ve shared a folder with decides to make changes to an important file or 20 without telling you.
Something dangerous finds its way into your Dropbox folder and gets shared with all your contacts.
Taking care of the security of your Dropbox account is critical, but its also important to make sure the devices you and your team connect with stay safe.
Depending on the Dropbox plan you have you can also get notified when something dodgy is happening, like when someone logs in from a strange location.
What if your Dropbox files ARE SHARED with the wrong person?
If you’re storing anything remotely sensitive in Dropbox, you need to pay extra attention to make sure your files don’t fall into the wrong hands. It’s super handy being able to create a link to a large document that anyone can use to download it, but share the wrong thing and you could find yourself in a world of hurt.
There are a bunch of ways using Dropbox could lead to your more sensitive files leaking to the wrong person:
Someone gets access to your account, and everything stored in it.
A former team member takes a copy with them when they leave.
Something is uploaded to a publicly share folder.
You accidentally share something with the wrong person.
The good news is Dropbox gives you ways of reducing the chances of your private stuff getting out, you just need to know where to look. The security page on the Dropbox website is a great place to start.