If you are reading this, you are probably not worrying about a random slide deck.

You are thinking about documents that actually carry weight:

Financials, cap tables, investor updates
Contracts, NDAs, HR and payroll files
Customer datasets, medical/insurance records, tax documents
M&A and fundraising data rooms

And there is a quiet anxiety underneath:

“If this ends up in the wrong inbox or open link, what does that do to our reputation, our customers, or our deal?”

You are right to care. Verizon's latest Data Breach Investigations Reports show that around 60–68% of breaches involve a human element – misdirected emails, bad access settings, stolen credentials, or people falling for social engineering, not just "hackers."

Let's walk through, calmly and honestly, how leaks really happen, what "secure file sharing" has to mean in 2025, and how to build something solid around your documents.

1. How documents actually get leaked

Most leaks are boring and human, not cinematic.

Misdirected emails and risky attachments

Auto-complete picks the wrong “Alex”; you attach a contract or ID and press send.
Healthcare and privacy regulators repeatedly highlight misdirected emails and wrong attachments as leading causes of reportable data breaches.
Once a file is attached, it lives in multiple mailboxes and backups. You cannot revoke or update it.

Recent analyses also emphasize that email attachments carry hidden metadata, lack strong encryption by default, and cannot be centrally controlled after sending, which makes them a long-term privacy risk.

Misconfigured cloud sharing ("anyone with the link")

Cloud drives are powerful but easy to misconfigure:

Folders or files left on "anyone with the link" effectively become public; you are just betting nobody guesses or forwards the URL.
Several real-world incidents involve years-long exposure because a Drive or cloud folder was quietly left open this way. Without identity-bound access, you lose control over distribution.

Over-broad internal access and link sprawl

Shared drives with "everyone in the company" access stay that way even as people change roles.
Links get dropped into tickets, Slack, wikis, and forwarded threads until nobody remembers who can see what.

Weak governance and no audit trail

Without data classification, DLP policies or audit logs, you often do not notice when something is overshared, exfiltrated or simply reused in ways you never intended.

So the core risk is not "cloud vs on-prem." It is: how casually are files allowed to escape, and how blind are you once they do?

2. What a secure file-sharing solution needs to achieve

“Secure” is not a marketing adjective; it’s a checklist.

A grown-up solution in 2025 should give you:

Strong identity-based access
- Share with specific people or domains, not just a link.
- Support partners on any email system (Gmail, Outlook, corporate domains) without forcing painful account gymnastics.
Granular permissions and least privilege
- View-only vs download vs edit.
- Ability to restrict forwarding, copying, and mass export for sensitive docs.
Encryption in transit and at rest
- Modern platforms rely on strong algorithms like AES-256 to encrypt content on disk and TLS to protect data in transit.
Centralised, revocable sharing
- One secure link per project/room, with all relevant files inside.
- You can revoke individuals, groups or whole rooms without touching ten different threads.
Deterrence against quiet leaks
- Dynamic watermarking that stamps each view with identity (email/name).
- Screenshot protection / interference where technically possible, so trivial capture paths are blocked or degraded.
Visibility and audit trail
- Who opened what, when, and from where with page-level analytics.
- Enough history for compliance, incident response and basic sanity checks.
Low friction for normal people
- Recipients should click a link, pass a simple gate (email, maybe passcode), and be inside. No 45-minute onboarding.

Peony exists specifically to bundle these behaviours into a single, calm workflow. Secure document sharing platforms provide all of this in one place.

3. How to do secure file sharing with Peony (step by step)

Here is a practical pattern you can use for investors, clients, vendors, auditors – anything that matters.

Step 1 – Decide what lives in the secure “room”

Instead of flinging individual attachments, decide on the bundle:

For investors: deck, metrics, data room docs.
For clients: proposal, contract, pricing, onboarding files.
For internal use: HR docs, finance packs, board materials.

Create one Peony room per relationship or project.

Step 2 – Upload and organise your documents

In Peony:

Upload PDFs, Word, Excel, slides, ZIPs, images – whatever belongs to that context.
Organise them into folders or sections if needed.

From this point, this room is the “source of truth” you share, instead of scattering files via email.

Peony encrypts your content at rest with strong algorithms (AES-256) and protects it in transit, while giving you granular access control and detailed audit logs.

Step 3 – Configure access and permissions

For each external party:

Add their email addresses or, if appropriate, their domain (e.g. @fund.com, @client.co) using identity-bound access.
Add passwords to Peony rooms for an additional layer of protection—you can require both identity verification and a password.
Set default permissions to view-only for sensitive documents.
Disable downloads by default when you do not want raw copies spreading using secure document sharing platforms.

You can add dynamic watermarking so every page shows the viewer's identity, and enable screenshot protection so trivial capture paths are blocked or heavily discouraged. Together, those make "quiet" leaks much less attractive.

Step 4 – Add an optional passcode

If you or your counterpart want "password-protected documents":

Add a passcode to the room or share link in Peony using password protection.
Share that passcode in a different channel (SMS, call, secure messenger) rather than in the same email as the link.

This aligns with long-standing security advice for sending sensitive data: keep the content and the secret separate.

Step 5 – Share one secure link and keep control

Now your email or message looks like:

“Here’s a secure link to your documents. It works with your existing email, and access is restricted on our side.”

If you later:

Fix a mistake in the model,
Add an updated deck, or
Need to remove a file entirely,

you change the content in Peony. The link your counterpart has stays the same. If the relationship ends, you revoke their access once using access management and are done. See who accessed files with page-level analytics: when, how long they viewed them, and which parts they engaged with.

4. Other methods if you can't use Peony

If Peony is not in place yet, here is how to raise your baseline.

Harden your existing cloud platforms

In Google Drive / Microsoft 365 / Dropbox, avoid "anyone with the link" for anything sensitive; use restricted, named users or groups.
Turn on MFA everywhere and use built-in DLP and sensitivity labels to detect or block risky sharing patterns.

Use encrypted containers when you must email

If you absolutely have to send via email:

Put documents into a password-protected ZIP or encrypted PDF using strong encryption.
Email the encrypted file.
Send the password via a different channel.

This is not elegant, but still widely used in regulated industries when portals are not available.

Consider end-to-end encrypted file-transfer tools

For one-off transfers where you do not need a whole data room, you can use zero-knowledge or end-to-end encrypted services (like some secure send tools or privacy-oriented drives) that encrypt files on the client before upload.

They are strong on confidentiality, but usually weaker on access management, UX and ongoing collaboration compared to something like Peony.

5. Practical tips to make this your default, not a one-off fix

To turn secure file sharing into muscle memory:

Classify your documents Decide what is Public / Internal / Confidential / Restricted, and only put the last two behind your strictest flows.
Make “no sensitive attachments” a house rule For anything with personal data, financials, or legal impact, send a secure link, not an attachment.
Ban “anyone with the link” for high-risk material It is repeatedly called out as one of the most common, avoidable causes of cloud data leaks.
Standardise on "one secure room per relationship" Investors, top clients, key vendors: each gets a Peony room. Everyone on your team knows "this is where we share sensitive files for X."
Review access periodically Once a quarter, quickly audit: who has access to which rooms, and do they still need it?

You do not need to become a security engineer. If you let a system like Peony be the front door for sensitive documents and treat email and chat as notifications, secure file sharing becomes something gentle and predictable instead of something you secretly dread every time you attach a file.

Frequently Asked Questions

What are the best practices for secure file sharing?

Peony provides best practices: upload to a secure Peony room with identity-bound access, password protection, watermarking, and tracking. Never use "anyone with the link" or email attachments for sensitive files.

How do you share files securely?

Peony is best: upload files to a secure Peony room and share one protected link with identity-bound access and optional password protection. Peony provides watermarking, screenshot protection, and analytics.

What's the most secure way to share documents?

Peony is most secure: upload to a secure Peony room with identity-bound access, password protection, watermarking, screenshot protection, and analytics in one platform.

Can you see who accessed shared files?

Most platforms provide limited or no access tracking. Peony provides complete visibility: see who accessed files, when, how long they viewed them, and which parts they engaged with.

What's the best secure file sharing solution?

Peony is best: provides identity-bound access, password protection, watermarking, revocation, and analytics without password sharing risks.

Secure Your Documents

Secure File Sharing Best Practices in 2025: Complete Guide to Protecting Sensitive Documents