When working through merger and acquisitions, one needs to follow a proper due diligence process, in which lawyers, financial advisors, and potential buyers will need access to highly confidential documents, often coming from very different organizations and structures. Matters are further complicated by the fact that all of the stakeholders have different types of devices, operating systems (OSs), and IT rules. Access must be thoroughly controlled and monitored, and more importantly, revoked when necessary. So, how can private information be made available without sharing the files themselves?VDRs and dataroom software vendors solve this issue by relying on access restrictions and some form of secure document viewing. Most VDR providers already prevent users from downloading or sending original files. However, this raises another interesting question: where should the applications that process those confidential documents actually run?Move the application, not the documentsUsually, these documents are viewed in a browser or with a dedicated, locally installed application. Viewing the document from a browser is convenient as no additional app is required and it generally works on multiple devices. That being said, depending on how the solution was built, the content of the document itself may be processed locally, which is a limiting factor and may impact the security of the method.While VDRs today can render documents remotely, how an application itself is built and delivered to the user can impact both the viewing experience and the protection of the document itself. Indeed, providing dedicated applications comes at the cost of installation, maintenance, and OS-specific support.In both cases, trying to focus the control efforts on the devices themselves actually increases the complexity, while potentially exposing sensitive information.An alternative to using a browser or locally installed application is to completely run the document viewer app in the cloud, and only stream its content to the user, using software like Anbox Cloud. This comes with the benefits of browser-based convenience and centralized application execution, meaning no need to process documents on the users’ devices.With Anbox Cloud, a VDR provider can run their own Android document-viewing application in an isolated containerized instance and stream its content through any browser. The user logs on to the VDR platform, opens the authorized documents, and interacts with the remote application without ever receiving the original file.The Android instance can be stopped when the session is over, removing its temporary data. It runs in the provider’s managed infrastructure, not on the user’s device. By doing so, the documents don’t need to be stored or even processed on the device. This considerably reduces the risk of unauthorized copies. Moreover, since the browser is actually streaming pixels, there is absolutely no residual data or traces of the document itself. Therefore, the VDR provider keeps complete control over the information, its processing, and its storage.This changes the architecture, but not the user experience.Why use Android for VDRs?That’s a fair question. If you only want to display a PDF, a conventional web viewer may be enough. The value of Android becomes more obvious when a VDR provider already has a dedicated Android app with its own document handling app, logic, integrations, and workflows.Using Anbox Cloud means that, instead of rebuilding that application for desktop platforms, the provider can stream it directly to users through their browsers. Users don’t need to install the Android app or even have an Android phone. Any browser will do.With Anbox Cloud you get the underlying infrastructure to run isolated instances of Android, manage application lifecycles, and stream applications. Its containerized execution model fits well with application-centric workloads, allowing providers to easily manage multiple independent sessions. Deploying to a public or private infrastructure also allows flexibility on where applications and data are processed. This model is useful not only for VDRs, but also for managing bring-your-own-device (BYOD) security, where exposure is reduced by keeping sensitive data off of users’ devices.In practice, this means you can reuse existing software seamlessly, while retaining centralized control of its execution. VDR providers can integrate the Android execution and streaming layer provided by Anbox Cloud into their existing security architecture.Security is a shared responsibilityStreaming changes the way information is delivered to a device. The VDR provider can do document processing in their backend and send only the rendered surface: the pixels, instead of sending the original document over.Streaming implies that only the graphical data is sent to the device. The server never sends the document or any part of it. The document is fully processed in the cloud and only the pixels (of the current view) are sent, which is the same as streaming a video. The file is never sent to the device, thereby decreasing the risk of exposure. This makes the extraction much more difficult.But this does not mean that one can’t get information. Malicious users can still take screenshots, screen recordings, or use an external camera, so we still highly recommend VDR authentication, document permissions, and watermarking.A different way to deliver confidential informationAlthough for web-native VDRs adding Android may not sound like an obvious advantage, cloud-hosted execution gives providers who are already using Android apps another way to expand access across devices, without needing to maintain separate clients or distribute documents for local processing.At the end of the day, the question isn’t whether Android is a better document viewer. It is whether the viewing application needs to run on the user’s device at all.With Anbox Cloud, it doesn’t have to.Further readingLearn more about Anbox Cloud or contact our team to discuss your use caseAndroid is a trademark of Google LLC.Anbox Cloud uses assets available through the Android Open Source Project.The Android robot is reproduced or modified from work created and shared by Google and used according to terms described in the Creative Commons 3.0 Attribution License.