We are very excited to announce the release of an updated version of the Safe4 secure file management solution. There have been many enhancements to the system both visible and behind the scenes to help improve the ease of use, performance and security.

The principal developments that our customers will be able to take advantage of in this update include:

• One of the key benefits of Safe4 is the ability to quickly invite others to access a vault. We made this process simpler in the last update and in this new version we have improved the process further by creating a new screen to handle the sign up process. This is easier to use, and requires new users to provide less information making it easier to complete the process to be able to access the vault securely.

• Safe4 has always provided a comprehensive audit trail – now the information in this audit trail has been unlocked by implementing a simple way to report on the activity in our customers’ vaults. The audit trail contains critical information and therefore access to this powerful facitlity has been secured with a further permission setting for provider users.

• Increasingly applications in the cloud are being linked to day to day solutions to make the use of cloud applications a simple extension of normal work processes. We are pleased to announce that with this release we are providing a comprehensive Application Programming Interface (API) to enable third party applications to integrate seamlessly with Safe4.

• Many users spend their days working in Microsoft Office. Until now it has been necessary to save documents onto a local disk or a network drive before uploading to Safe4 to deliver to clients. This has been simplfiied in the new release – it is now possible to map a network drive on your PC direct into Safe4 using a standard protocol called WebDAV. This provides a seamless means to access Safe4 and deliver information to clients and other business users. Unlike Dropbox, Box, Google Drive etc, this does not need any additional software to be installed on local PCs; it can be managed by  network administrators and maintains the audit trail, security and permissions that form the foundation of the Safe4 solution.  Importantly it means that the “Save As …” function in MS Office applications can now place documents direct into a Safe4 vault, and that when a file is opened using the Windows interface it can be edited and saved directly back into Safe4 as a new version.

• It is now possible for users to define an email signature – this can help ensure that the communications sent from Safe4 are compliant with corporate policies for information confidentiality, disclaimers etc. The signature can also contain logos, links and pull information automatically from each user’s profile.

• At the last release Safe4 added the ability to scan uploaded files for specific keywords, such as confidential, commercial in confidence, etc. This provides an effective barrier to unwanted information leakage. This facility has now been extended and files that are inside ZIP files are now also scanned, further enhancing the robustness and utility of this feature.

• Behind the scenes a great deal of engineering work has been carried out to increase performance; some pages are now displayed 10 times faster, and security has been further improved.

• We are also pleased to advise that this new version of Safe4 has undergone a comprehensive independent penetration test and has passed with flying colours.  More will be published on this very soon.

Safe4 has been growing steadily over the past 3 years, and usage records are being broken every month. It is an exciting time for Safe4, and we hope our customers continue to enjoy working with the system and delivering value to their clients. We obviously want to ensure that we meet our users’ expectations and welcome any feedback and suggestions for improvement.