Yes — with one caveat that matters more than the rest of this page. Reputable cloud contract storage is more secure than the shared drive it replaces: dedicated security teams, third-party audits, encryption you'd never configure yourself. But the provider only secures the cloud. You secure what's in it — who has an account, what they can see, and what leaves the system. That second half is yours no matter which vendor you pick.
Choose your next step:
What "Encrypted" Should Actually Mean
Ask for two things, not one. Data in transit and data at rest both need to be covered, including backups.
Then ask for the paperwork: the vendor's current SOC 2 report, their GDPR posture, and the results of their last penetration test. If they can't produce those, the word "encrypted" on their site is marketing, not a control.
ContractSafe is SOC 2 and GDPR compliant and hosts on AWS — ask us for the details and we'll walk you through them.
If you want the history, our 2018 SOC 2 attestation announcement and GDPR hosting announcement show what we announced back then. They’re archive posts, not current proof, so ask for up-to-date security documentation when you evaluate the platform.
Four Questions That Decide It for You
Where does the data physically live? If you're bound by GDPR or you work in a regulated industry, name the region and get it in writing.
What happens when you leave? Ask about export format, egress fees, and how long your data stays in the vendor's systems after termination. In the cloud, deletion means crypto shredding plus a written attestation — not a wiped disk.
Does your contract data train their AI? Get an explicit contractual restriction. It's the question most buyers still forget to ask.
Who at the vendor can read your contracts? Look for need-to-know access, no standing admin rights, and logging of every view.
Who Secures What
Your vendor is responsible for the physical data centers, the infrastructure, patching the platform, and encrypting storage. You're responsible for who gets an account, what each role can see, whether departing employees get deprovisioned, whether SSO and MFA are on, and what your team shares outside the system. A vendor with perfect security can't stop a contract from walking out in an email attachment sent by someone who never should've had view access to it.
When Something Goes Wrong: Your Breach-Readiness Checklist
Ask any vendor for their breach notification window in hours, who gets called, and whether you get the log data your own security team needs.
Then lock down your side:
- Turn on SSO and MFA.
- Set read-only and no-delete roles for anyone who doesn't need more.
- Review access quarterly.
- Pull the audit log after every offboarding.
Those are the part of cloud security you actually control.
See, for example, Betamax (younger readers, please use your Google search abilities!), which lost out to VHS, both of which are now dinosaurs replaced by DVD, which is quickly losing ground to streaming and downloading. We could give countless similar examples of computer hardware and software technologies. The point is, due to constant change, it is natural to be hesitant about investing in a new technology: most investors want to be sure of a reasonable likelihood of permanence.
Similarly, in an era in which data breaches make headlines, managers know it’s important to ensure that a technology is safe and reliable. But for anyone still wondering about the permanence of cloud computing, most of us would agree that that that the technology is here to stay. In fact, businesses small and large have come to understand the power of cloud computing. The good news is that modern cloud security is probably much safer than you realize, and in many cases more secure than what you could provide yourself. In Thales's 2025 Global Cloud Security Study, 68% of security professionals said attacks on credentials and access controls, not weaknesses in the cloud platform itself, are the fastest-growing threat. In this article, we will discuss some of the reasons why.
The Cloud is Big Business, Which Is Good for You
Cloud storage has become a massive business, and it will only continue to grow. According to Flexera's 2025 State of the Cloud Report, more than half of enterprise workloads already run in public cloud, with more migration expected over the next 12 months. Thus, most organizations have at least dipped their toe in the water.
However, there is still a lot of room for growth. The same Flexera report shows how concentrated the market has become: 53% of enterprises run significant workloads on Amazon Web Services, Microsoft, and Google.
Significantly, these major players understand that data security is the number one concern for their customers. Thus, for years, they have had an intense focus on developing and implementing the most technologically-advanced security features and developing a level of security that most businesses can’t match. And with all that revenue at stake, you can bet they don't take cloud security lightly. If you have any doubts, try to get into one of their data centers--is it harder or easier than getting into your company’s server rooms? As far as we’re concerned, that’s a win-win for both the providers and their customers!
Encryption Technology
When data is transferred from an organization to the cloud, the data is encrypted. The encryption process uses complex mathematical algorithms to protect data while it is being transferred. It takes an encryption key to decipher the files. Thus, even if someone got their hands on data being transferred, it would be indecipherable and meaningless. It's precisely this technology that cloud contract management solutions like ContractSafe use to keep your contracts... well, safe!
Remote Storage
Risk managers are taught to fear the possibility of one bad event having a chain reaction of negative consequences. For example, in both government and business, important leaders are often required to travel separately. That way, if there’s a problem, the possibility of a domino effect will be minimized.
Data can be considered in the same light. Natural disasters, electrical problems, or spilled soft drinks can harm data on-site. By storing it remotely, you create an extra layer of safety. Plus, companies like Amazon make multiple extra copies of the data and store it in different places (called “redundancy”), to further increase the level of protection. Disasters would have to occur at the same time in multiple locations to lose the data. That’s risk management!
Data Can Be Safely Shared
We’ve probably all had someone share data with us by making and providing us with copies of a file. Sometimes, we’re even-handed a flash drive. The shortcoming in that scenario is that there now exist multiple copies of the document in the possession of multiple people.
As an alternative, with ContractSafe’s cloud contract management solution, the document is stored safely and securely on Amazon web servers. Simple permissions can be granted to the people who should have access to the information. They don’t need their own copy – they only need a computer with access to the internet! You can even create “read-only” and “no delete” users to limit dissemination of the data and to protect it from deletion.
At ContractSafe, we understand that as the industry makes the inevitable shift to cloud contract management, some people will worry about cloud security. We’re happy to tell you that we’ve got your back. We use Amazon’s safe data centers. Data and passwords are encrypted. We use malware and intrusion detection and have lots of other safety features. Heck, we even hire real hackers to keep us on our toes and make sure we haven’t missed anything! Trust us – we are dedicated to protecting your data! Start your free trial today.
Related Reading
- ContractSafe Receives SOC 2 Type I Attestation
- ContractSafe now available in GDPR-compliant version!
- Education Contract Management Software
How ContractSafe Helps
The four questions above are the ones we built ContractSafe to answer. Here's what that looks like in practice.
Trust your data is secure. ContractSafe is ISO 27001 and SOC 2 certified, encrypts your contracts with 256-bit AES, backs up your data offsite, and uses intrusion, malware, and virus detection to keep it safe.
Control who sees what. Role-based permissions let you give each team member exactly what they need. Executives see the big picture, department heads see their contracts, and sensitive agreements stay protected.
Prove who did what. Every view, edit, and download is logged, so you can pull the audit trail after any offboarding or security review without asking a vendor for it.
Find any contract in seconds. ContractSafe's OCR reads every word in every document, including scanned PDFs, so search finds any contract, clause, or term instantly.
Never miss another renewal. Set custom reminders for any date that matters, so a locked-down repository is also one that works for you every day.
.svg){kind=logo}
.svg)
