A safe bet: storing and sharing sensitive business information in the cloud

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“It all started with Google,” says Alon Hillel-Tuch, managing partner at Stacked Capital, recalling the incident that made him rethink data security at the organisational level. “We are G Suite users, meaning that we were using Google Drive with our own encryption on top of it to secure files and make sure that in case something goes wrong, nobody can access them. There were volumes of data sitting on our Google Drive. The problem is that we had a domain wild card issue with our SSL. What Google does in such cases is they shut off your entire suite for four to five days. So, for days, we had absolutely no access to our own data and that’s very scary. It took a long time to get it back. After that, we made an internal decision not to rely on Google when it comes to mission-critical data. Because this is just not acceptable.”

Considering just how mission-critical their data is, Alon had every reason to be cautious. Stacked Capital is an early-stage, post-seed venture fund based in New York City that focuses on technology investments. Their portfolio includes up-and-coming tech ventures, such as Edquity, a financial planning and budgeting app that offers much-needed help for high school and college students with their day-to-day finances. Another one, Quartix, is an alternative lender that specialises in supply chain financing, improving the financial performance of supply chains on the buyer side and reducing the borrowing costs of SME suppliers. Munich-based Saffe has set out to make payments more secure and less fussy. Their mobile payment app uses facial recognition technology that lets users pay using just a selfie.

The screening and sourcing process involves tons of sensitive data, from financials through business strategies to proprietary information. “We write checks for companies all around the world that are just starting off on their timeline. Whenever we have to check a new company, I have to look at their data and I have to share confidential documents with my limited partners. This is something that we have to do as a venture fund every day,” Alon says.

The road to safety

Following the G Suite mishap, they started sourcing for a new cloud service provider. “We were looking for a solution that was outside of Google and Amazon servers and also provided the enhanced security we needed at a native level. Tresorit provided us with peace of mind because our data is not sitting on some large server farm or within the Google ecosystem, plus the native-level security and team collaboration features made Tresorit the perfect fit for us,” Alon explains. Today, all members of Stacked Capital’s core investment team who work on the data-critical side of the business use Tresorit in their day-to-day work. Alon, who selected and set up Tresorit himself, serves as the administrator.

“Whenever we look at a new company, we create our own diligence room in the cloud where we store documents and data in all kinds of formats to understand what the company looks like before making an investment,” the managing partner explains. These internal rooms are shared between members of the core team. They can get pretty big; companies sometimes send 400MB-1GB videos that used to eat up a lot of local disc space in the past. Tresors, however, allow Alon and his team to store huge files in the cloud, securely and conveniently. And access them, whenever and wherever they need to. “We store all our documentation and information on Tresorit, including backups of our G Suite. We just don’t trust Google to give us our data,” Alon points out.

External collaboration made easy

Sharing information with external collaborators is also a key part of Stacked Capital’s screening and decision-making process. “We do a lot of file sharing. If we need to share certain documents with one of our limited partners, we will share it externally through Tresorit.” Alon says.

Once, the team even created a folder that was about 130GB and were pleasantly surprised to find they could still share it with someone who only had 256GB hard drive space available. Alon recalls: “They could just skim through the data room and pick up the documents that they needed without having to download the bulk folder. Can you do this with other cloud service providers, too? Yes. But with Tresorit, I can also see who does what with the files, choose who can and who can’t edit them, and I also feel much more secure with what they were pulling.”

Interested in learning more about the benefits of Tresorit's secure sync and share service? Check out the following material:

• Cloud Storage Security Comparison
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• Secure file sharing inside and outside your company