Channel your inner Bourne Identity with this secure document transfer system that even Matt Damon would be proud of.

Well, spies, of course. But also any business that wants to keep its intellectual property in the right hands only.

Keeping documents secure in an increasingly shared environment is a real worry for businesses. This is a near-flawless package that executes what it sets out to do to a very high level.

Simple MS Office documents documents work great, but sending a large Excel file went about as smoothly as a wheelbarrow ride down nine miles of gravel road. Hopefully this is a beta bug yet to be squashed.

If you watch the movies, apparently all it takes to keep state secrets of Roswell proportions secret is to whack it in a manilla envelope and put a “For Your Eyes Only” stamp across the front. Obviously the CIA has never heard of social bookmarking or has ever heard those dread words: “It’s gone viral…” as a million people simultaneously read documents confirming that Hillary Clinton is indeed, a Lizard person from the centre of the earth.

Of course, keeping documents secure is a real challenge for businesses the world over. Sensitive documents need to be sent internally and externally with stakeholders and clients all day, every day. Sure, we already have tools like .pdf extensions and read receipts to keep some sort of document integrity, but it’s not exactly the most secure way of sending the Colonel’s secret recipe out into the world. All it takes is a less than scrupulous employee to forward the attachment to a personal email address, take a sneaky screen-grab or just send the document on over to the shared printer.

Is this a problem? Darn tootin’ it is.

Now enter WatchDox: an ultra-secure way of sending documents to anyone with an email address. The service works by uploading documents to the WatchDox SSL encryted server and selecting an email address to send the document through to. Once the mail has been sent, the recipinent receives a link where they can view the document online. Sounds like you’re just opening a PDF document? Oh contrare, mon frere.

Firstly, the document is blurred out and can only be viewed by holding down the enter key for a few seconds – a great little feature to ensure that unauthorized prying eyes are not watching your screen as you open the file containing the nuclear launch codes. It’s once you open the document is where WatchDox gets really clever. As a viewer, you can only do what the sender allows you to do. In its most secure form, viewers are unable to forward, print, copy or select any part of the document. Now, I hear you already: “I’d just take a screen-grab”. Uh-uh, no you won’t. As soon as the ‘PrtScn’ key is touched, the document is automatically blurred and rendered unreadable (this also works for Snagit captures).

Even though WatchDox is only in early Beta, this is an exceptionally rendered and well considered solution to a very real problem. The account set up and verification proces is simple enough, but if you were sending dozens of document per day, would get pretty tired pretty quick. Is this a flaw? Not at all – WatchDox also provides a Outlook plugin available for download which allows you to automatically send a document via WatchDox without having to go through the whole upload process. Once the document is received, the recipient has some nice basic tools to navigate the document, find text and zoom in-and-out. Is it as sophisticated as Adobe’s Acrobat reader? No. But then again, I think that’s more by design than omission. The strength of this solution lies in it’s bullet-proof simplicity.

The only problems that I ran into while using WatchDox was when I tried to upload a large, complicated .xlsx (Excel) file. In short, WatchDox pooped itself and got caught in a never-ending “processing’ circle. Hopefully, future beta releases will address any niggly issues like this. Bugs aside, as a concept it is difficult to find faults with WatchDox. I could nit-pick and critique the overall design and say that it needs to inject a bit more ‘business’ into the website (the orange dominated color scheme doesn’t really inspire trust), and I would like to see a bit more information on accepted file types and the such, but as I say – now I’m really digging to find cracks in the package.

While WatchDox is currently in public beta it is providing their service free of charge. There’s no word on expected pricing structures as yet, but I would expect that any price under “first born child” would see security-conscious business customers flock to the service.

If you are concerned about documents falling into the wrong hands, then you should definitely sign up and start sending by WatchDox. If you’re a spy for the IMF, then sorry – self-destructing messages have officially been made redundant.

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