Virtru Academy Live: Secure Share for End Users

Steven Margolies: Alright, thank you all for your patience. We can get started. My name is Steven Margolies, and today we are going to do Virtru Secure Share Essential User Training.

On the agenda, we will discuss what Virtru is and why it's important, how to use Secure Share, how to get support, and then we'll have time at the end for questions. Let's dive in. What is Virtru? Virtru is an email and file encryption solution that gives users full control over their data. We help customers keep data secure and stay compliant with major privacy regulations such as HIPAA, FERPA, CJIS, and many more.

It helps ensure that customers stay compliant with regulations where failure can lead to fines. It limits the risk of data breaches, gives you an additional layer of control over your data, ensures only authorized recipients access that content, and helps maintain trust. If there is a breach or a compliance violation, that can undermine trust, and reputational and economic fallout can occur.

When should you use Virtru? The following are just some common use cases. For any specific guidance for your team and your organization, please talk to your internal administrators.

We see Virtru commonly used when dealing with health services—again, we mentioned HIPAA—dealing with PII and PHI, health reports, personal health information, and personally identifiable information. It's also used when dealing with police and fire departments or courts for case reports, criminal justice information, and security data.

Other use cases include children and family services, which overlaps with HIPAA and other personal information; Social Security, including Social Security numbers and anything else related to financials; and human resources, such as onboarding, benefits, compensation, and anything private. Again, this is just a set of examples. For guidance, please talk to your internal administrators.

The main part of today's presentation will be a demo. I'm going to walk you through logging into Secure Share, sending content, requesting content, viewing content that you've received, as well as looking at a history of the content that's been shared back and forth. We'll look at the recipient experience, and we'll talk about some additional tips and tricks.

With that, let's dive in. The first thing for Secure Share is you'll have to go to the address directly. That is secure.virtru.com/secureshare, and you'll get to a landing page where you can enter your email address. I like to bookmark it as well; it just makes things easier.

From here, you'll enter your email address. On this next page, you will sometimes see an option to log in with your provider if you use Google or Microsoft. If you do not use one of those, you will only have the verification email process. I'll show this in the recipient experience, but I'm going to use Google for this one. You'll log in with your provider credentials, and you will land in the portal.

The interface might look slightly different, and you might see some different tabs based on your subscription, but the main tab we are going to start with is this share screen. Here is where you can add the files you wish to share with a recipient. Let's say I want to send a couple of files. You can drag and drop them.

You can also select them from your computer. Depending on your organization's settings, you might see an option to grab files from your Google Drive, OneDrive, or SharePoint. Once you have all the files you want, make sure to scroll down if you don't see the button, and hit next.

You will get to a section where you can apply security settings to this content. Let's say I want to set an expiration date. I'm going to do one month for this file and hit update. I'm not worried about these other settings, but the expiration date means the recipient loses access after that time.

Watermarking means that for supported file types—which are listed there and in our help center—we will watermark the files so that they can't be downloaded. When the user is viewing the content, their email address will appear across the face of the document. If they take a screenshot, for instance, you would know who did that.

The last piece, persistent file protection, always requires that a user signs in to view the content in Secure Share. If they try to download it, they would essentially just get a link back into Secure Share.

Once you have your settings configured, go to the next page, which is where you can set your recipients. Here, I'm going to choose my recipient, add a subject, and then I will put some text in here. Now, the files are always going to be encrypted.

For the text, you can choose whether or not you want that to be encrypted. You can put this message outside of the Secure Share portal so it just appears in the email, or if you add some additional content that might provide helpful context but you still want it to be private, you can encrypt the message.

For this example, I'm not going to encrypt the message with the email. Once you're ready, hit send. If you need to verify anything, you can go back and confirm your files are there and hit share. You will get a confirmation page once that share has gone through.

On that page, if you need to make modifications to any of the settings, recipients, or files, you can hit the pencil icon. You can also revoke access. If you sent something wrong and want to pull it all back, you can revoke it. You'll also get a confirmation email saying that you've shared files with this recipient, and the external party will get an email containing the message I added and a link to the files.

We'll walk through the recipient experience real quick, and then we'll walk through some of the other Virtru end-user experiences. The recipient will click "View Files." Because the content has been shared, when possible, we will display the email addresses of the recipients. We won't show BCC'd users, and if the recipient list is long, they will have to enter things manually. But in most cases, they can select their email address and then choose the verification method that works for them.

If they are not on Google or Microsoft, they have to use a verification email. If they are on Google or Microsoft, they still have that option. For this example, I'll walk through what that looks like. You can see there's a code entry field, and in the email itself is the verification email. They can either use the code, or if they're in the same browser and device, just click "Verify Me" to get back into Secure Share.

You can see it mentions what settings were applied, including the expiration date, and which ones were not applied and are turned off. Here is that message again. Even though it's not encrypted, we put it in here too just because it provides helpful context. And here are the files, which they can view locally or choose to download if that's allowed.

Additionally, if they want to send some content back—maybe this user has their own recipe—they can go ahead and do so. If they hit reply and add that file, they also have security settings. It locks the recipient because they're replying to it and keeps the subject, but they can add their own message and share it.

They will then land on a confirmation page with the same edit controls. They will also get a confirmation email. Then, you as the Virtru customer and recipient of this file will have your own link. I don't need to verify again because I've already verified in the session here, but when I open that up, I can see the content.

Another piece I want to cover is requesting files. Not only can you send files out, but you can also make it easy to request files from external parties. We built in three different options. One is to send an email with a link saying, "Please send a file back." Another is to copy a link, which can be placed anywhere. We find that users like to put this in their email signature. Lastly, we can give you an embed code to put into a webpage.

If I go back to the same user we used before and hit that request button, you can see they now have a request link. When they go in here—again, this user is already verified because we just went through that—they land directly on the "Add Files" page. My email address is locked, and the subject is locked, but they can add their own files and message.

These links do the same thing. If I copy the link here, and we pretend that the link was posted somewhere and the user clicks on it, you can see they land on the Secure Share page. When they go through the process, my email address is locked because they're using my link.

Another thing I want to show you is what happens when you receive files back. Whether it was a reply or you sent a request link, if you have received files, you can view them and usually download them. Depending on the configuration, you might have an option to save to Google Drive.

You might also have an option to save to SharePoint or OneDrive, or your admin might disable local downloads and only offer these cloud options. Administrators can request different settings regarding where files can be sourced from when sharing, as well as where files can be downloaded.

Again, these are administrative settings, so if you are not seeing something that you would like or that you expect, definitely talk to your administrator.

Another nice section we have is the history page. This will show you a record of content going in and out. You can see here where it says the data owner; in this example, I am the sender.

I have sent some recipes, and I can click on this and get to that content. I can click here to get to the same message summary where, if needed, I can modify it. If they missed the expiration date, I can extend it. Let's give it two months. Or maybe I forgot to add somebody who needs access, I can go there to add them, or I can take someone off. Once that's complete, I can go ahead and hit finish.

On the history page, for something I've received, I have the message summary action. However, when I go to view the content that I've received, I don't have that pencil icon. I can't modify or control access. That is for the external party—the Gmail account in this example—to control.

I also want to mention that we support using security rules in the Secure Share portal. If your administrator has security rules, you might see them interacting with the content.

Let's say I have a recipe, and my organization has a rule that I can't send files to badguy@notvirtru.com. You might see certain actions trigger. You might see security settings like automatic expiration or watermarking apply. You might see something being blocked, whether based on the recipient or the content of the attachment. Again, these are subject to your administrative rules in the Virtru Control Center.

Another helpful tool is a progressive web app, which is essentially a mini self-hosted browser just for Secure Share. If you use Secure Share a lot and you want an icon on your desktop or in your taskbar at the bottom, you can install Virtru Secure Share. As a progressive web app, it serves as a mini browser session dedicated entirely to Secure Share.

I also want to mention custom restrictions. In addition to the security rules I mentioned before, administrators can apply special restrictions specifically within Secure Share, such as the file types that can be shared, the file count per session, and file sizes.

They can also automate whether content is watermarked, has an expiration date, or has persistent file protection. These settings can be different for inbound versus outbound content. These administrative settings are possible to configure, but if you are an administrator and interested, you need to have our custom branding enabled for this to apply.

I briefly mentioned this before, but just to reiterate, we have the ability to pull directly from or drop directly into Google Drive, OneDrive, and SharePoint. By request, we can control which options are available.

I also want to briefly talk about some other integrations. In addition to pulling from OneDrive and SharePoint within the Secure Share portal, we have applications that can act as an add-on living in Google Drive or living in SharePoint and OneDrive. Those are separate installations that allow you to find a file within that repository, select it, and essentially drop it into Secure Share for you.

Additionally, we have a Zendesk integration, which is a slightly different product. For customers that have it, all the sharing actually occurs in Zendesk, allowing you to securely share or request files directly in your ticketing system. Whereas the Drive and OneDrive options can be installed by administrators, the Zendesk integration requires support from the Virtru deployment team.

You may have also noticed the workspaces button at the top of my Secure Share page. We actually have a new product called Virtru Collaborate. If you have Collaborate, it includes Secure Share. It is a slightly different product. I'm going to show you a quick video about Virtru Collaborate. If you want to learn more, there will be a webinar later this month on June 23rd at 11:00 AM Eastern. If you go to the website, you can register for that. I'll play this quick video, and that should hopefully cover the basics.

Store, share, and collaborate on sensitive files exactly as your business demands. Virtru Collaborate is purpose-built for defense contractors and regulated industries, delivering a secure, FedRAMP-authorized environment for protecting sensitive data while enabling confident collaboration.

Because protection is embedded into the file itself, data remains under your control at all times, even when shared with external parties. Granular, context-aware access controls adapt in real time, ensuring only the right people can access the right data under the right conditions. When working with contractors, vendors, and partners, you no longer have to choose between data security and rapid collaboration. Virtru Collaborate delivers complete data control, giving you both protection and productivity.

That's just a little teaser. Again, we have a webinar later this month if you want to learn more about that product. It is a separate product from Secure Share, although it does include some similar functionality.

Before we jump into questions, I quickly want to cover how to get support. There are two main methods, both from the help center. The first is through the articles. We have tons of articles aimed at end users and recipients.

If you have any questions, you can visit support.virtru.com. For your external recipients, if they are having trouble, there are a lot of how-to and troubleshooting articles available.

As an end user, if you go to the user section, you can see there is a section for Secure Share. This mainly covers the primary Secure Share products, offering how-tos, troubleshooting, and more.

If you're still having trouble and these articles don't answer your question, we're always happy to help. There is a "Contact Support" button at the top where you can fill out a form. Give us some details about what you're experiencing, and we would be happy to give you assistance.

With that, I think we can jump into questions. I do see a question about size limits: Are there any size limits to the files that can be uploaded, or a limit to the number of files that can be uploaded in a share?

We do have some limitations for file sizes. By default, unless the admin has made changes, Secure Share can support up to 15 gigabytes per file.

Obviously, performance is going to vary. If you have a slow machine, it could take a while to process a file of that size, but we do support it. Your admin can request a lower limit, whether that's for inbound or outbound files.

For the number of files per share, there is no standard limit. If there is one, it's very, very high. You can definitely send plenty of documents at a time without any trouble, unless your administrator has restricted that.

There was a question asking to show how to get the signature link. If you're back in Secure Share and you're on the request page, we have two different sections. We have "Copy Link," and let me show you what that looks like in a second.

That will give you a link that you can use to embed in your email signature. You probably want to hyperlink this. If you want the embed code for website work, it gives you the HTML to easily embed a link.

Again, those are on your request page. If your organization has completed what's called a sync, where we might be pulling your user directory from Google or Microsoft, you might see a dropdown where you can select an alias or a group address to generate a request link for. If I want to use an alias here, any links I get are going to be for that particular address.

Next question: Are there any file type limitations? Not really. We support pretty much any file type that's out there unless, of course, the admin has decided to limit the files to only support PDFs and Excel files, for example. That would be an administrative setting on our end.

Alright. Thank you all for joining today. Hopefully, this was informative. We plan to run another session in Q3, so keep an eye out. We generally do webinars on the first Tuesday of the month, and we have a rotating product schedule. In three months, we should be doing Secure Share again. If you have new users in your organization that are interested, we'll be running this again. Thank you all, and have a great day.