Secure Storage is normally used as a service of our secure collaborative portal. This guide takes you through all steps you take to activate the service.

1. Registering and logging into secure portal
2. Secure Storage service in the portal
3. Client software initialization
4. Creating local secure storage vault
5. Setting up connection to remote server
6. Web interface versus Windows Explorer interface
7. Setting up secure shared group storage
8. Transferring Secure Storage settings to another machine
   
   

Registering and logging into secure portal

The first step to access the secure portal and secure storage is to request and install digital certificate that will indentify you to the server providing all services. The certificates for our public service can be obtained instantenously from our Certification Authority.

After you have requested and installed the certificate, you should access the secure portal. You will be asked to present your certificate:

Assuming you are Down Jones, you select "Down Jones" certificate. Portal is identified by the text in parentheses in the certificate name. Hence, you are accessing portal "Public" as Down Jones.

If this is your 1st attempt to access the portal, you will be shown the following page:

Enter your data. Please, note two important things:

1. The name you enter in the 1st field will be used as your identifier in Secure Storage
2. You can use any name you wish; it is not necessary for the names in the certificate and in portal to match. Portal uses your e-mail address as a unique identifier. You cannot change your e-mail address in portal or in secure storage. If your "real-life" email address has changed, you will need to re-enroll.

Submit the form. You will obtain the following reply:

Please, note that portal is not asking for your user ID. This information is taken from the certificate. You only need to provide your password. Why do we need the password in addition to the certificate? Well, certificates can be stolen if you are not protecting them carefully! Certificate and password is like your credit card and your signature.

Type in your password and hit "Enter". You will get to your portal home page:

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Secure Storage service in the portal

When you accessed the portal, you have been automatically added to portal's defualt group (in this case, All-members group).

To access Secure Storage, select "Secure Storage" from portal's "Services" menu and open Secure Storage service page. I you haven't installed Secure Storage client software yet, you will be able to do that from this page:

When you register to a portal supporting Secure Storage service, two storage spaces are created for you: your private space ("Down Jonses's Private Storage" above) and a shared space for each group you join in the portal. Initially, only the default group storage is created ("All-members" storage). We will return to Web interface later.

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Client software initialization

It is time now to install and activate Secure Storage client software. If you haven't done so yet, go to the Secure Storage service home page and download the client (at present, Secure Storage client comes bundled with Secure Instant Messanger. Both components are essential for portal operation). Store downloaded file in a local directory, execute it, and follow the instructions.

Secure Storage client is an extension of Windows Explorer. It does not install any program groups. Correctly installed Secure Storage adds an icon to "My Computer" folder:

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Creating local secure storage vault

As you see, Secure Storage interface is just like any other folder, except for the "Secure Storage" menu. The folder in initially empty. by right-clicking in the window, you get a menu with two items: "Create folder" and "Add Portal".

"Create folder" operation allows you to create a folder on your local machine (inside of the vault) that can be used to store strongly encrypted files. You can have any number of such folders. Collectively, these folders are referred to as "local secure storage area".This is basically a spcae for your most sensitive information that you want to protect in case your desktop or laptop are stolen or broken into. Without the password you have created when you initialized Secure Storage access to these files is not possible, and a brute force decryption is, for all practical purposes, out of question. Remember that if you forget your password, the files in the vault are basically lost. Nobody will be able to help you with decryption, including us.

After you have created local secure storage area, you can encrypt the files by simply dragging them from "normal" folders:

Figure above shows a file in your local storage. Please, note that in the current release the files CANNOT be open by applications directly in the vault. The file must be copied to a temporary location, opened, modified, closed, and copied back the the vault. This applies to both local and remote folders and is perceived as an additional security measure.

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Setting up connection to remote server

To access your remote secure storage you have to add portal to the client:

Enter name of the portal you are a member of (in this case "Public"), your portal name (see above), and your portal password (NOTA BENE: this is portal password, NOT secure storage password). Finally, enter the URL to the Secure Storage application server. If you are using our demonstration portal, the URL is

http[s]://stor.collabworx.com/sss/cam

If you are using your company's or a provider's service, obtain the URL from your system administrator.

Use of SSL (https) is optional, since all files are strongly encrypted anyway. If you are truly paranoid, use https transport.

If all items have been correctly defined, after you click OK you should see the following window:

These files have been placed in the remote vault earlier. As you can see, you can also create folders (to arbitrary depth). Remote storage behaves the same way as local files system. To put additional files in the vault, drag and drop or copy and paste, do the same to copy files back to normal space. All encryption/decryption and sending/getting files from the remote server will be haqndled for you transparently! This is the ultimate convenience offered by Secure Storage design.

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Web interface versus Windows Explorer interface

We have mentioned above that it is possible to obtain information about vault contents using browser. This is indeed so. Please, see below both interfaces in one image:

Similarly, you can access the group storage. Please, note the following:

1. You can only access group storage if you are member of this group;
2. You can be a member of any number of groups in portal; each group has a separate shared storage space;
3. Web interface allows you to quickly check if there is anything new in the shared space;
4. Windows Explorer interface supports full access to files in the remote storage (see figure below).

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Setting up secure shared group storage

If you access to the group storage you will find out that you can add new folders and delete empty ones, but when you try to place a file in the shared space, or retrieve it, you will get an error message:

Select the name of the file you have just downloaded when prompted (file extension is .sss). You will need to provide portal password to import the file:

That's it. Your Secure Storage Vault is now fully operational. If you create or are added to a new group, you will need to repeat import security group settings procedure for each new group.

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Transferring Secure Storage settings to another machine

If you wish to install the Vault on another machine you use (like you laptop), simply export your security settings using the Secure Storage menu item and import them to your vault on the 2nd machine.

This procedure will save you Secure Storage configuration work.

Additional information about using Secure Storage.