What is a virtual data room?
A virtual data room (VDR) is a secure online space for sharing sensitive business documents with outside parties, where every viewer is controlled and every view is tracked.
A virtual data room is used when a company needs to share confidential documents with people outside the business - investors, buyers, lawyers, auditors - without losing control of them. Unlike emailing a file or sharing a folder link, a data room gates who can open each document, records who looked at what, and lets the owner revoke access at any moment.
The term comes from the physical 'data room': a locked room where, during a deal, a company placed its confidential papers and let vetted parties read them under supervision. A virtual data room is the same idea online, which is faster, searchable, and leaves a precise audit trail instead of a sign-in sheet.
Data rooms are most associated with fundraising and mergers and acquisitions, but the same controls suit any high-stakes document exchange: board packs, legal bundles, IP disclosures and due diligence of any kind.
In 99 Data Rooms
How it works here.
99 Data Rooms is a UK-hosted virtual data room. You turn any PDF or dataroom into a tracked, revocable link, gate it with a passcode, verified-email code or NDA acceptance, and see page-by-page who read what. Documents are stored in London, encrypted at rest, with a free tier of three rooms.
Common questions
Virtual data room, in short.
What is the difference between a virtual data room and cloud storage?
Cloud storage (like Dropbox or Google Drive) is built to store and sync files. A virtual data room is built to share sensitive files under control: per-viewer gating, page-by-page tracking, watermarking, NDA acceptance and one-click revocation. See our data room vs cloud storage explainer.
Who uses a virtual data room?
Founders raising investment, companies going through a sale or acquisition, law firms sharing bundles, and any team that needs to prove who saw a confidential document and when.
Is a virtual data room secure?
A good one is: access is gated per viewer, files are encrypted at rest, links are revocable, and every view is logged. 99 Data Rooms hosts documents in the UK with AES-256 encryption at rest and a DPA on request.
Related terms
What is an NDA gate?
An NDA gate requires a viewer to accept a non-disclosure agreement before they can open a shared document, with each acceptance recorded against their email and a timestamp.
DefinitionWhat is viewer analytics (document tracking)?
Viewer analytics is page-by-page tracking of a shared document: who opened it, when, how far they read and how long they spent, so you can see genuine engagement rather than guess at it.
DefinitionData room vs cloud storage: what is the difference?
Cloud storage stores and syncs your files; a virtual data room shares them under control - gating each viewer, tracking every page, watermarking copies and revoking access on demand.
Try it on a real document. Turn a PDF into a tracked, revocable link in a couple of minutes. Three rooms stay free for as long as you want them, no card required.