Your role as organisation administrator

A successful Databeamer environment starts with a secure and usable application, but it does not end there. How Databeamer is set up and used inside your organisation matters just as much.

As organisation administrator you manage the organisation and help make sure Databeamer is used securely, appropriately and effectively. That makes you more than a technical administrator: the combination of knowing the organisation, knowing its processes and caring about information security is what makes the role important. Preferably several people share it, for example someone from IT or security together with someone responsible for a process or its content.

What makes Databeamer different #

Databeamer was built to make working together across several parties secure and smooth: between organisations, but also with private individuals.

• Simple by design. Databeamer has few fixed fields and is not a case-management system. It is for collaborating, communicating and exchanging what people can, may and want to share with each other. The structure is free, so it can follow how people actually work together.
• European. Databeamer is a European service. See the compliance page for hosting, processors and certifications.
• Readable only by those it is meant for. Content is locked on the user's device; Databeamer itself cannot read it either. See Welcome to Databeamer.

These choices affect administration. Responsibility for content and structure lies with the organisation itself, and Databeamer cannot recover an account on a user's behalf. Both come back throughout these pages.

The organisation and its roles #

The organisation is responsible for the Databeamer plan, its users and the available capacity. Groups are created and managed from the organisation.

An organisation has three roles:

Role	Responsible for
Owner	The whole organisation and its plan, including single sign-on and appointing other owners.
Admin	Users, groups and organisation settings.
Member	Uses Databeamer within the groups they belong to.

A role can be held by several people. Always appoint more than one person with enough administrative rights, so administration never depends on a single person. An organisation always has at least one owner. See Organisations for the buttons.

Administration is not access #

An organisation administrator has administrative rights at organisation level, but not automatically access to the content of any group. Access to a group and the information in it is arranged separately: whoever needs the content is added to that group as a member.

The distinction matters for privacy and information security. Administrative rights do not mean you can see every piece of confidential information in the organisation, and that is how it should be.

Security detailsWhat is this?

The distinction is cryptographic, not just a setting. Every group has its own key set, handed only to that group's members (wrapped with ECIES to their exchange public key). The organisation has no master key, and owners and admins hold no key for groups they are not a member of. What they do see: that a group exists, its name, its member list and the plaintext labels, types and statuses. See Groups.

Capacity #

The plan sets the capacity: the number of seats, the number of groups, storage, transfers and requests, and the number of people outside the organisation you work with. Limits and usage are under Org Settings › Usage; see Plans and limits.

Keep an eye on whether the organisation stays within them. When a limit is reached or comes into view, contact us to adjust the capacity. Spot it early, so users do not get stuck unexpectedly.

Outside collaborators and guests #

A group administrator can also add people from outside the organisation to a group. Databeamer shows them as Outside collaborator: a partner, a client, a resident. An outside collaborator only has access to the groups they were invited to, not to the organisation as a whole.

People without an account who open one of your transfers, requests or secure mails are guests. They have no account and no keys; see For recipients and senders.

Outside collaborators count towards the organisation's capacity. Group administrators should bear that in mind when inviting them.

Read on #

• Set up your organisation: from use cases to folder structure and labels.
• Roll Databeamer out to your users: accounts, recovery phrases, onboarding and offboarding, introduction.
• Manage and review the environment: periodic checks, data subject rights, checklist.