How do I limit staff downloading my business data?

[Daria_Jelcic]

Hi all,

I am hiring a staff member to work with my in my small business. I have a recruitment agency and naturally my database is so valuable to me.

I would love to know if there is a way I can stop a collaborator from being able to download the data in my base? What is to stop a person from taking my database (either by copying and pasting or downloading) and starting their own recruitment business in the same, very specialised industry.

No harsh comments please — I know I need to trust my future staff and sure I will eventually but in the meantime I also need to protect my intellectual property.

PlEASE NOTE: they do need the database access in order to do their job

Thanks in advance!

[ScottWorld · Accepted solution]

Unfortunately, Airtable is a relatively low-security platform, so it does not provide any security in these regards.

All collaborators (even read-only collaborators) can download all of the data in your base, and all collaborators (even read-only collaborators) can make a personal/private copy of your entire base as well. Furthermore, Airtable will never alert you when your collaborators perform either of these actions.

There aren’t too many options to workaround this. One option is to create a share link for a view, which provides read-only access to that particular view. Another option is to create a portal using a portal tool like MiniExtensions.com, which also allows for editing of the data.