Intralinks VIA®

Organizations increasingly treat digital transformation as a necessity driven by cross-boundary supply chains, ongoing cloud migration, and tightening privacy regulations. These pressures create a persistent tension between security teams who prefer to encrypt and restrict sensitive information and end users who want simple access, editing, printing, and sharing—often using familiar tools and consumer cloud services. Existing solutions typically sit at extremes: tightly controlled secure repositories or document-centric rights management that depends heavily on business processes.

Intralinks VIA is positioned as a middle path: an Information Rights Management (IRM) approach delivered in a controlled, server-managed environment that protects documents while minimizing disruption to everyday work. Introduced in 2013, VIA is a cloud-based, multi-tenant SaaS platform designed for secure collaboration within and across organizations. It supports multiple devices (desktop, mobile, browser), enables synchronization across endpoints, and allows sharing with external parties without forcing users into unfamiliar workflows. Users can work in native applications, set sharing permissions, and maintain consistent experiences across devices, while security controls operate largely in the background.

From the corporate side, VIA emphasizes policy-based permissions, auditing, and governance reporting. It uses “frictionless IRM” to mark and encrypt documents so they can still open in native Microsoft Office formats, while enforcing rights for editing, printing, and downloading; Outlook attachments can also respect IRM settings. Workspaces log activity, can revoke access, enforce watermarks, limit downloads, and expire permissions automatically—sometimes reducing the need for separate mobile data management. The service supports data sovereignty through selectable data centers and the ability to pin repositories to compliant jurisdictions, while offering strong authentication and customer-managed keys alongside a separate email-based user directory that simplifies external collaboration but adds user-repository maintenance overhead.

• Digital transformation is driven by supply chains requiring cross-boundary communication, cloud migration, and increasing regulatory pressure.
• Intralinks VIA was first introduced in 2013.
• The Intralinks platform is a cloud-based, multi-tenant SaaS solution with data centers in the UK and the USA.
• Additional data centers are planned/opening in Germany, Japan, and Australia.
• VIA supports Windows, macOS, iOS, Android, and browser-based access.
• Users can work offline, and changes synchronize when devices reconnect.
• Workspaces manage document usage, log access, and can revoke access when permissions expire.
• Documents can be unshared, permissions can auto-expire, and access can be denied after expiration.
• Documents accessed via the VIA client are protected in transit using TLS.
• Intralinks maintains a user directory based on email addresses rather than requiring direct integration with a corporate identity store.

• “Getting the right balance between securing company data while at the same time making it useful is a constant battle for most companies.”
• “The design principle behind the Intralinks VIA product is to provide a secure document environment while at the same time minimizing the impact on end-user computing.”
• “Users do not want to have to take specific training in order to share documents securely.”
• “To the degree possible system operation should be intuitive, with security controls applied in the background without users having to know how the system protects files.”
• “Intralinks have achieved the first by adopting an ‘frictionless IRM’ approach that marks and encrypts documents to keep them secure while allow sharing policy to be applied.”
• “Microsoft Office documents can be opened in their native format while still being protected.”
• “Companies selecting a secure information solution need to consider three aspects of data security: data at rest, data in motion, data in use.”
• “The strength of Intralinks VIA is the way in which it accommodates these information sharing requirements.”
• “A benefit, however, is the ability to quickly add external identities to the user store so that document sharing is not restricted to just company staff.”
• “The product suits any enterprise deployment.”