Firmex Data Room

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When you first take a look at the Firmex data room you will see a very bold claim: that they are the most secure data room on the market today. Furthermore, it goes on to say that Firmex is “the most widely used virtual data room for supporting complex processes including diligence, compliance, and litigation.” Let’s put these claims to the test so we can try to find out what customers find so useful inside this data room.

Firmex Data Room Review

If we take the first claim, that Firmex is the most secure data room, it is unclear at first sight why this may be the case. There seem to be standards features that are found everywhere else such as watermarks, two-factor authentication, and data encryption but you can hardly call these features innovative. For example, there is nothing to defend your documents against camera based attacks. An innovative feature found inside some of the other data rooms out there is “Fence View” which serves as a physical barrier between the user and the document. Given that corporate espionage is on the rise, the biggest threat to your data might be from within and it is not clear how Firmex defends against such threats.

Also, granular access permissions do not go deep enough. While you are able to grant and restrict access to certain documents to the users you choose, complex deals such as M&A transactions and due diligence require much more granularity. Basically, the granular access permissions must be able to give the administrator full control over all the information inside the data room without detracting from productivity. For example, some data rooms offer secure spreadsheet viewing which allows you to upload an Excel spreadsheet into the data room while restricting access to the formulas that were used during the calculation.

Firmex does a fairly good job in terms of accessibility. They have an app on iOS only, which is more than many other data rooms can boast, but you are not able to add users in the middle of the meeting or upload documents from your email. The pace at which business is conducted nowadays requires having the ability to access the data room from wherever your job may take you, even if you do not have an internet connection at the moment, but the Firmex app does not offer offline access. If this is not much of a hassle for you, then the app is otherwise fine.

Overall, it does not seem clear why Firmex calls themselves the most secure data room given that they do not do a good job defending your documents from internal threats. One of the reasons that business leaders choose to use a data room is because it gives them peace of mind that all of their documents will be secure. However, it will be tough to sleep soundly at night knowing that someone could just simply take a picture of the computer screen with their cell phone, containing your information, and you will never know about it.