When it comes to sharing medical documents with clients or transferring project data with remote collaborators, secure uploading and downloading business files are crucial for the productivity of users. However, without adequate security, these critical business processes can expose your company to threats and data security vulnerabilities.
Implementing verification of file uploads in your portal is a great way to ward from the threat. This involves identifying potentially harmful information in user’s files, and ensuring that they conform to the extension they claim to have.
In the real world, this means making sure that your website checks for dangerous file extensions such as.exe,.dll, and.bat, as well as encrypting files to protect sensitive information from being accessed and shared on the open web. This also means allowing users upload only recognizable, valid files (like jpg and png) and removing potentially harmful characters and patterns from the names of the files to stop hackers from hiding malicious contents in innocent-sounding formats.
Another important element is to make sure that you’re not exposing sensitive data on your server in the first place. You can accomplish this by requiring users to submit their passwords prior to the time they are able to access uploaded files. In addition, you must encrypt the pass token provided by the uploading service and then send it to your own server so that users are able to only access the corresponding data on your system.
It is important to keep in mind that even when your files are encrypted and you’re using an encrypted portal however, it’s still recommended not to post copyrighted materials on a public website. This could result in legal issues and cause doubt in the reputation of your business. Instead, you should use secure methods of exchange such as email or fax, or even meeting with colleagues in person for your business requirements.
