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DatAnchor is a cloud - SaaS product that offers “0-trust document encryption”. I just did a demo with them recently and they seemed to be incredible/over the top. The only major downside that I saw with them is the inability to use documents offline if they are encrypted (which may be a major upside to some). In hopes to not make this seem like a plug for the vendor (because I think it looks really promising), I’m going to briefly mention the functionality I heard about in my demo and from their website and my question will be, what are some downsides that you see with the model?

  • Software as a service
  • The log tracking actually logs position of device when document is opened (I’m guessing geolocation spoofing could break this, but not confirmed).
  • Every device that you want to open datanchor encrypted files must have the agent installed
  • Their licensing is per user (sorry multi shift companies).
  • Currently only runs on Windows devices with Mac and Linux to be available by end of Q4 (this doesn’t say anything about mobile devices, may be an issue if you have C levels who run their operation from their phone).
  • Document level encryption - FIPS certified, every document encrypted with dat anchor is uniquely encrypted (or so it would seem via their pitch). I wonder if this means the key to unencrypt is the same or uniquely identified?
  • All documents are constantly kept in cipher text until authenticated (via rules you define) with the cloud in which the document is then unencrypted. They do have a 3rd party product they use to authenticate IPs/geolocation but I think is has been established it’s pretty easy to get your hands on a temp Azure/AWS server.
  • Ability to share from other cloud storage locations (but these files lose their anchor encryption once shared, it makes sense, but still, oof).
  • There is an emergency oh crap handle in the event a “black-swan” event occurs (this is their words exactly). This one makes me nervous, but it isn’t the end of the world…
  • You do need to unencrypt all files before dropping datanchor (not bad).
  • They don’t provide discounts from what I can tell so far (no difference in yearly/monthly pricing).
  • Must be connected to internet to open encrypted documents

I’m waiting to hear back on how they handle virtual disks, but overall it doesn’t sound like a bad product, almost to good to be true.

11 Spice ups
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is this former eFolder Anchor? Did they rebrand?

https://www.crunchbase.com/acquisition/efolder-acquires-anchor-3--6e3835a5

when I used to work for an ISP they had an eFolder Anchor product, it was similar to Dropbox / OneDrive and it was terrible, constant sync issues, encryption didn’t work as expected etc.

If they are related, I’d say stay-aways, if not related, I have no idea :¬)

2 Spice ups
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With any SAAS, you need to have detailed plans for exit strategy…either you want to change vendor or they exit the market.

You need to know if you want file-level encryption, storage-level encryption, data-in-motion encryption or virtual-storage encryption. And then how you will handle data going to 3rd parties (eg sending files via emails or uploading as Google Docs or SharePoint etc).

Then you also need to know if you can trust that company…coz not only do they handle the encryption method & keys, they may have a copy of your data as well…they did not seem to exist before 2020.

4 Spice ups
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I think they may be related, those icons are very familiar… They don’t work as a storage system though from what I can tell. They just work with other storage systems/on the individual files themselves wherever they are located. Yeah, the bane of all cloud, crappy connection issues lol.

I would love to know that, but unfortunately I don’t have that level of power to enforce that. From the legal standpoint, since a client signs an authorization to release their information, it getting out doesn’t mean we get any damages, it just hurts ethically and reputation wise if a leak were to occur. We use four different ways of sharing information, on of which is an already secure product, the other three… Not so much and they tend to require more expensive plans. That is why I was thinking file-level encryption may be the best way to go since we don’t really use cloud products or at least their enterprise equivalent.

@alexw

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Sorry you guys, it was a really hard choice. I gave adrian the best answer due to additional information provided/things to be aware of when choosing SaaS vendors (may help others in general), but Neally technically answered the question exactly and provided experience with the product (sorry Neally).