Sharing files in a safe way
Posted: Wed Jul 06, 2011 2:30 am
Quite often clients for whom I build websites nowadays want a feature on their website to share documents privately. A kind of intranet functionality. Because it's only this relatively simple feature, it's not needed to build a complete intranet. You'd say that a basic upload/download feature, protected by a login they can share, would be enough. Not too difficult to build in PHP.
However, I wonder if there are better, more secure options. Building this on their public website, most often:
- the website itself runs on an open source cms with all it's potential security vulnerabilities
- website plugins, the same
- files will be on a shared server, more risks
- lost/stolen passwords
etc
Maybe something completely different would be better, like using GoogleDocs with documents set to private or something. What do you think?
However, I wonder if there are better, more secure options. Building this on their public website, most often:
- the website itself runs on an open source cms with all it's potential security vulnerabilities
- website plugins, the same
- files will be on a shared server, more risks
- lost/stolen passwords
etc
Maybe something completely different would be better, like using GoogleDocs with documents set to private or something. What do you think?