SOS Unwraps Cloud-Based Document Sharing Geared to Enterprise
SOS Online Backup on Monday took the wraps off SOS Collaborate Private Cloud, a cloud-based document syncing and collaboration service geared to helping enterprises provide a secure alternative to unauthorized use of public cloud sharing services.
The El Segundo, Calif.-based company said information workers looking to collaborate with coworkers sometimes turn to the “stealth cloud” of unauthorized and unsecured cloud sharing services that operate outside the view of corporate IT. This presents a significant risk to the protection of corporate data. The answer, according to SOS, is not to shut down a tool that can enhance collaboration and boost employee productivity but to bring the tool in-house in a secure manner.
“Consider an employee of a defense contractor using something like Dropbox,” said Ken Shaw, chief executive officer of SOS Online Backup. “What happens to those files when the employee leaves the company? That's enough to give any CIO or CTO heartburn. Think of SOS Collaborate as a secure, enterprise-friendly Dropbox that a company can host on their own infrastructure. I can put a file in the SOS Collaborate folder on my desktop and immediately have it in the cloud. Then I can share it, edit it, access it from all my devices, and without realizing it as a user, I'm doing it all over my company's own secure infrastructure.”
Shaw noted that SOS Collaborate can be deployed on-premise or in the data center. The platform can be deployed as a virtual appliance or on a new physical machine dedicated to collaboration and works with any kind of storage. The groupware platform enables secure file syncing, sharing, editing, commenting and document management, all hosted on an organization's infrastructure.
In addition, SOS designed the platform with enterprises subject to regulatory requirements in mind. It uses AES 256 bit encryption throughout and supports compliance with regulations including HIPAA, SSAE 16, SAS 70 Type II, Sarbanes Oxley, GLBA and PCI. The platform also features open source plug-ins to allow organizations to customize it for proprietary file types and vertical industry application data.
