Secretshare - How to Share Sensitive Information Securely
Sensitive data, from passwords to confidential logs, is frequently shared through unencrypted channels like email, creating significant security risks. This habit exposes organizations to potential breaches and compliance failures. This article introduces a self-hosted, secure alternative that empowers your teams to collaborate safely without compromising convenience or control.
The Case
In today’s fast-paced digital environment, sharing information quickly is essential. However, the convenience of tools like email or public pastebins often comes at a steep price: security. When employees share credentials, API keys, or private code snippets through these channels, the data is left vulnerable and unencrypted. This practice creates a blind spot in your security posture, risking accidental leaks, unauthorized access, and non-compliance with regulations like GDPR and HIPAA. A single mistake on a public platform can lead to a major data breach, damaging your organization’s reputation and bottom line. The core problem is the lack of a simple, secure, and controlled method for sharing temporary, sensitive text.
The Goal
The objective is to provide a zero-trust solution for sharing sensitive information that is both highly secure and easy to use. We introduce Secretshare, a secure, open-source pastebin based on the trusted PrivateBin platform. Its end-to-end encryption model ensures that data is encrypted in the browser before it ever reaches the server. This means only you and the intended recipient, no one else, not even the server administrator, can access the content. The goal is to eliminate data exposure to third parties and give you full control over your sensitive information.
The Implementation
Our Secretshare solution is built upon the robust and open-source PrivateBin project. Secretshare is a tailored solution designed for enterprise use. We focus on customizing the platform to seamlessly integrate into your workflow while enforcing best security practices.
Branded and Intuitive Interface
First impressions matter. We customize the PrivateBin template to align with your company’s branding, creating a trusted and familiar environment for your employees. By modifying the default templates, we can deliver a clean, professional look that encourages adoption and reinforces your organization’s commitment to security.
Sensible, Secure-by-Default Configuration
Out of the box, PrivateBin has numerous options. We pre-configure your Secretshare instance with security best practices. This includes setting sane defaults for paste expiration, enabling “burn after reading” options, and disabling features that may not align with your corporate policies, such as file uploads, unless explicitly needed.
Built for Control and Compliance
By self-hosting Secretshare, you retain complete control over your data, ensuring it never leaves your infrastructure. This is critical for data sovereignty and meeting compliance standards. As the administrator, you have plausible deniability of paste contents due to the end-to-end encryption, but you retain the ability to manage the service and, if necessary, remove any encrypted paste from the system.
The Conclusion
While PrivateBin provides a powerful open-source foundation, a default installation can lack the enterprise-ready polish and secure-by-default configuration necessary for corporate environments. At WedaCon, we bridge this gap by transforming this versatile tool into Secretshare, a hardened and customized solution tailored to your organization’s security policies and brand identity.
Ready to eliminate insecure sharing habits and empower your teams with a zero-trust alternative? Get in touch with us, and let’s build a secure, intuitive, and compliant data-sharing platform together.