In the past few years, we’ve come to terms with the state of secure file transfer solutions - and it doesn’t look good. Legacy file transfer solutions - and the ones that follow in their footsteps - have continued to be cumbersome and laborious to manage. They have a reputation for being compliant, but can’t seem to escape threat and risk — as evidenced by this year’s many Progress MOVEit Transfer vulnerabilities – and other legacy file transfer systems exploited previously.

As a result, many businesses are examining alternative and more modern secure file transfer solutions. Among these, Virtru and Kiteworks have surfaced as notable contenders. To guide you in this comparison, here's a detailed breakdown of five key reasons why Virtru Secure Share is the best choice for compliance and collaboration:

1. Virtru Secure Share Offers a Quick & Easy Deployment Experience That Scales

You don’t need secure file transfer protocol (SFTP) or managed file transfer (MFT) to be compliant in your daily, ad-hoc file-sharing workflows. That’s because Virtru offers flexible, cloud-based data protection that's platform-neutral, user-friendly, and quick to implement. It's ideal for securing large files that are too big for email transmission, without the need for complex setups or extra effort.

With Virtru Secure Share, you don’t need a months-long deployment to configure Zero Trust file sharing. You don’t even need a major software installation.

Users and administrators have the flexibility to modify access permissions whenever necessary for enhanced security and oversight. This includes options to restrict downloading and withdraw access rights as needed.

Additionally, you can choose to manage your own encryption keys for Secure Share and other Virtru applications. This guarantees that only authorized individuals can access your data, preventing any third-party access without explicit permission and elevating control and oversight for CIOs and CISOs.

2. Virtru Separates Data Access from System Access, Lessening Potential Threat Damage

Many organizations use MFT/SFTP solutions to transfer files, but often fail to properly remove old files that are no longer needed. This poses a significant security risk. As files accumulate over time, they tend to get forgotten, even though they may contain sensitive information. Should the system ever get compromised, the inactive files become easy pickings for attackers to access valuable data.

As a result, these traditional file transfer platforms can be risky because they often link system and data access, leading to significant problems if a security breach occurs. In contrast, Virtru's solutions provide a safer approach by keeping data and system access separate.

Secure Share not only encrypts data in transit, but data at rest, too. As a result, our customers can sleep well at night knowing that they are always in control of their sensitive data and can revoke access to it at any time, from anywhere.

3. Virtru Secure Share Wins on User Experience

You can give an employee encryption tools, but you can’t force them to encrypt. This rings true for so many complex secure file-sharing applications.

The reality is, a vast amount of file-sharing use cases are ad-hoc but critical; Virtru prevents insecure workarounds by providing a simple but elegant file-sharing experience for the average user… which includes external collaborators and even customers.

“Virtru’s ease-of-use is the single best benefit of the platform. It works and it’s simple, and in the world of encryption, oftentimes that’s not the case. Anytime you’re trying to get people to adopt new technology, the greater the ease of use, the greater the adoption.” - David Bowden, Zwift’s Vice President of Information Security, Data Privacy, Compliance, and IT

Virtru Secure Share enables external collaboration without the need to deploy and manage new desktop software or credentials. Users simply use any standard browser to sign in with their current Google or Microsoft IDs.

Easily share files up to 15 GB using a simple drag-and-drop functionality, ensuring data encryption from the moment of upload. And by integrating with familiar tools end users already use daily, Virtru removes adoption barriers and accelerates secure external file sharing.

4. Virtru Protects Unstructured Data Flowing Through SaaS Apps

Protecting structured data (information stored in database formats) is relatively simple. However, safeguarding unstructured data, such as emails, documents, and data traversing through SaaS applications, presents more of a challenge in terms of governance, monitoring, and security.

According to Dark Reading, over 89% of apps connected to Google Workspace and 67% to M365 pose high or medium risks to SaaS data, with many having permissions to delete or share sensitive corporate data.

Virtru Secure Share meets and protects your unstructured data where it’s at, offering a comprehensive, efficient, and easy-to-implement solution that accommodates a broad range of file types and usage scenarios. It provides administrators with complete oversight and control over data sharing. Additionally, it seamlessly integrates with applications like Zendesk, Confluence, Google Drive, and more, ensuring the security of data entering and leaving SaaS platforms.

All while adhering to compliance standards like HIPAA, CJIS, CMMC, ITAR, and others, empowering you to maintain control over sensitive PII, PHI, and other sensitive data wherever it goes.

5. Our Customers Trust and Recommend Us

At Virtru, we pride ourselves on a heritage of over 10 years in safeguarding sensitive information across key sectors like finance, healthcare, government agencies, and education. We’re FedRAMP authorized, FIPS validated, and SOC2 compliant, and we support HIPAA, ITAR, CJIS, CMMC, FERPA, GDPR, NIST, and CCPA compliance for over 6,000 organizations worldwide.

Our unique data security approach is anchored in the Trusted Data Format, a groundbreaking technology developed by our CTO during his tenure at the NSA. This innovation, now an open standard in data protection, sets us apart.

We don't just follow the path of conventional legacy solutions that have repeatedly fallen short. Instead, we're dedicated to future-proofing your data protection. Our approach blends robust security with seamless collaboration, ensuring a simple experience for users and streamlined management for administrators.

We have a proven track record with over 180 5-star reviews on G2 (and 2 Best Security Software awards in a row). We’re an Inc Power Partner, a Gold Cybersecurity Excellence awardee, and we have a 4.7 rating on Gartner Peer Insights.

But don't just take our word for it - our customers' experiences speak volumes:

“To have that level of advanced data protection without having to think about it, that’s priceless. Between Virtru’s email security and the Virtru Secure Share integration for Zendesk, our most common and highest-volume collaboration workflows can remain secure.” - Jill Emerson, System Admin at Team Rehabilitation

“Organizations have teams of people that manage email services and encryption, having to manually upload keys and all of the stuff for email encryption to work. What's the salary for a person to just do that? And then what's your cost for Virtru? Obviously, it's drastically less.” - Nate Lotts, Information Technology Lead at Rise8

“To have a tool like Virtru that we could roll out ourselves, that didn’t require a lot of work to put it in the hands of our users, was an advantage." - Brett Henry, Senior Security Engineer at TrueCar

“I just like the idea of Virtru just acting more as a channel to receive data rather than a warehouse somewhere or a data center… With Virtru, we're just simply sending you a file, or you're sending us a file, and it's not being kept anywhere else besides between our two computers.” - Quintin Zabel, Information Tech & Security Director at Platte Valley Bank

“It's very rare that we get a vendor with this type of acumen and reputation… It was different. It was refreshing. You made my job easy.” - IT Director, Global Engineering Firm

Want proof? Put us to the test. Book a demo today and unlock game-changing security for your data flows - easier than you ever imagined protecting email, files, and SaaS.