Why are we offering secure file sending services?
Email exchanged between a Princeton University email account and one managed by any organization outside of the Princeton network is insecure. The message and attachments passing between the sender's and recipient's email systems are in a form that can be read by anyone with access to the computers through which the email travels.
Email exchanged exclusively among Princeton University email accounts is afforded a higher level of security. Each message is encrypted (human-readable plaintext is converted to incomprehensible text) as it travels from the sender to the University's email server and from the University's email server to the recipient. However, Princeton email users may currently forward University email to an off-campus email account potentially exposing an email and attachments to unintended parties. Your message to a Princeton email account may actually leave the campus, potentially being delivered insecurely to a non-Princeton account, e.g., GMail, Yahoo mail, etc.
To ensure that a file being sent to a non-Princeton email address will be transferred securely, or if you want to provide additional security for files you need to transfer to someone within Princeton, we offer several secure file sharing options.
Using secure file sending services at Princeton
- Classify my data. The first step in protecting our information is to classify it in accordance with Princeton's Information Security Policy. Visit the Protect Our Information website to learn about the administrative data classifications at Princeton (Restricted, Confidential, Unrestricted Within Princeton, and Public).
- Choose a file sharing service. Once you’ve determined the sensitivity of your data by classifying it, you can choose the service that best fits your needs. Here are the options available:
|
Name |
Protection against secondary file sharing? |
File size limit |
Share files outside of the University? |
Use to transfer Restricted information? |
Benefits | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SecureSend | No | Up to 130GB | Yes | Yes |
You can invite outside parties to share files with you securely. |
|
| Central File Server | No | 5GB+ | No | Yes |
It’s simple to share files within Princeton University. |
|
| Azure Information Protection | Yes | Unlimited | Yes | Yes |
This solution allows you to prevent all secondary sharing of files (copying, pasting, printing). |
|
| Microsoft Purview Message Encryption | Yes | Less than 150MB | Yes | Yes | Send a secure message from within your Microsoft Outlook mail and prevent secondary sharing of files (forwarding, saving, copying, and printing). Warning: Not all attachments will be encrypted. | |
| PU Microsoft 365 (SharePoint, OneDrive, & Teams)* | No | See each solution | Yes | Yes | You can restrict access to specific individuals inside or outside of Princeton. You can also restrict access to defined groups within Princeton (e.g., Department 41236 Staff). The link will then only work for those you give access to. | |
| PU Google Drive | No | 5TB | Yes | No |
You can restrict access to specific individuals inside or outside of Princeton. The link will then only work for those you give access to. Note: We only have a small number of groups defined in Google. |
|
| PU Dropbox | No | 1TB | Yes | No | You can restrict access to specific individuals inside or outside of Princeton. The link will then only work for those you give access to. |
*PU Microsoft365 including SharePoint Online, OneDrive, and Teams may be used to store Restricted information, with the exception of protected health information (as defined by HIPAA).