“Dropbox for Teams” revamped
Dropbox
Dropbox (http://www.dropbox.com) is hugely popular: more than 100 million users synchronise over one billion files among 500 million computers, tablets and smartphones every day. The free version offers 2GB of online storage space, and this can be extended by inviting friends or by signing up to a paid for subscription (up to 50GB or 100GB).
For businesses too
This year Dropbox is aiming at yet another 150 million extra devices connected to this service. To achieve this, it will focus more on business users, a group which hasn’t been well represented until now. True, there was a “professional” variant, Dropbox for Teams (http://www.dropbox.com/teams), which allowed workers within one company to collaborate with each other, but this didn’t really amount to much: the administrators of such an account were only able to add or remove members. That’s why this service never became popular in the business world. This is expected to change now, thanks to some new tools.
What’s new?
Greater visibility. As the administrator of a Dropbox for Teams account, you can now monitor the activities of all the Dropbox users: you can see from which IP address they log in, which device they use, which third-party apps are installed on this device, to whom they’ve sent an invitation for sharing files, etc. You can even generate reports which show the activities over a given period. The dashboard allows you to see which of your employees has uploaded or shared files recently.
Greater control. As the administrator, you can set and change the user rights (“sharing controls”) of each team member. You can determine who is allowed to share which files with others. You can configure which devices and apps can be used for accessing the Dropbox account and you can also change passwords.
Tip. As the administrator, you can even suspend other users’ sessions. You can now demand that each team member should abide by a stricter security policy (“two-step verification”).
How much does it cost?
Dropbox for Teams starts from $795 (£525) per year for five users who together are entitled to 1,000GB of storage space. The price for each extra user is $125 (£82) per year, entitling you to an extra 200GB. If this virtual space isn’t sufficient, Dropbox can increase this limit.
Note. After signing up with your credit card, you can try out Dropbox for Teams free of charge for two weeks.
Our conclusion
Dropbox for Teams doesn’t come cheap, but at least it now offers fully-fledged tools for administering an online space in a professional environment. Incidentally, this is necessary, as studies show that more than half of data theft and other abuses occur within the business itself. As it is, you don’t need to worry about the protection of the files in your online space, according to the makers of Dropbox: the files are encrypted using the AES-256 standard, which is also used by banks.
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