Sharing data with outside organizations is table stakes in conducting effective business today. Sensitive data requires adherence to enterprise-wide policies to assure its security and privacy as it is shared externally. As data volume and traffic continue to explode, sharing sensitive data becomes a greater necessity and presents an ever-growing risk.
Our persistent encryption remains with sensitive data and file in transit and at rest, preventing unauthorized access to sensitive data—both on-premises and cloud-based—no matter where the data is copied or shared. Organizations using PKWARE’s PK Protect can securely employ an array of appropriate methods to protect sensitive data transfers. Download this solution overview to learn more.
Sharing Is Not Optional, So Protection Has to Travel
Exchanging data with other organizations is ordinary business, and the volume only increases. Sensitive data has to satisfy enterprise-wide policy while it is outside the enterprise, which is the part conventional controls handle least well.
Persistent encryption stays with the file in transit and at rest, on premises and in the cloud, and it holds however many times the data is copied or shared onward.
The Question Nobody Asks Until Afterwards
Whatever mechanism an organization uses to send encrypted data, one question decides whether it works: how does the authorized recipient get the key.
The common answers are poor. Passphrases sent over email, read out on a phone call or pasted into a chat are neither secure nor standardizable. The rigorous alternative, a full public-key infrastructure deployed across an enterprise, is frequently impractical at the scale and pace real sharing happens.
How Smartkeys Change That
Smartkeys are persistent encryption keys managed centrally rather than by the people sending files. Access to encrypted data can be granted and revoked quickly, after the fact, without recalling anything.
They support both passphrase and certificate-based encryption, which is what provides flexibility at enterprise scale. An organization sharing sensitive data outside its boundaries regularly needs both, because recipients differ in what they are able to support.
Recipients Who Do Not Use Your Software
External sharing usually fails on the far end. The recipient has no licence, no appetite to buy one, and no interest in the sender’s architecture.
A free reader closes that gap. After a brief one-time setup, an external recipient can open messages, data and files encrypted with a Smartkey and sent by email, whether or not their organization uses PKWARE software at all.
Covering the Channels People Actually Use
Protection applies across the mechanisms already in place rather than requiring a single approved route: email messages, cloud services, FTP and removable media.
That breadth matters because the channel is usually chosen by the recipient’s constraints rather than the sender’s preference, and a control that covers only one of them is a control people work around on the days it does not fit.
Security That Builds Confidence Rather Than Friction
A simple, predictable exchange process is worth more than a strict one nobody completes correctly. Recipients form a view of a partner’s competence from how the transfer behaves.
Adding security without adding complexity is therefore a commercial position as much as a technical one, which is why the key management question at the top of this page decides more than it appears to.
Where This Fits Against DLP and Access Control
Access control governs who can reach data inside the organization. Data loss prevention governs what may leave. Neither describes what happens to a file after a legitimate transfer to a legitimate recipient.
Persistent encryption covers that interval, which is the one an organization has least visibility into and the one where most third-party exposure originates.