The oil and gas data room: Secure data management for the energy industry
As cybersecurity risks in the oil and gas sector continue to rise, energy companies face growing challenges in securing business information and collaborating with multiple stakeholders.
Technical data, such as environmental audits, field exploration logs, facility specifications, and legal documents must be shared seamlessly across extensive internal and external teams while adhering to stringent security standards.
the quantity of cyberattacks on energy infrastructure has increased substantially, magnifying [energy] organizations’ need to protect against cyberthreats
Partner at Deloitte Risk & Financial Advisory
Meet Ideals virtual data room (VDR) — a powerful solution that streamlines and secures document management for oil and gas companies, catering to the energy sector’s unique challenges. This article explores the concept of a virtual data room and shows how Ideals helps energy companies secure business-critical information.
What is a virtual data room for the energy sector?
A virtual data room (VDR) is a secure online repository for handling confidential information during business transactions and complex business processes. Virtual data rooms are modern versions of traditional data rooms designed for the following tasks:
- Maintaining a detailed audit trail
- Managing document versions
- Controlling role-based access to confidential documents
- Organizing Q&A sessions between multiple parties
- Organizing custom role-based workflows
- Storing and sharing large data volumes
These capabilities make virtual data rooms particularly valuable to energy companies for the following applications.
| Application | The role of secure data rooms |
| Mergers and acquisitions (M&A) and bid management | Provides powerful data capabilities for extensive due diligence, environmental assessments, and post-merger integration planning. |
| Asset management | Allows for real-time access to asset documentation and smooth coordination between maintenance teams in oil and gas projects. |
| Fundraising | Ensures the controlled exchange of financial data between multiple parties in a secure location. |
| Project development and joint ventures | Facilitates organized collaboration between partners, contractors, suppliers, and regulators and seamless management of technical data. |
| Regulatory compliance | Simplifies maintaining comprehensive records and meeting data security standards. |
| Licensing | Centralizes licensing documentation and simplifies tracking and updating licenses. |
Key features of oil and gas data rooms
Staging hub
A staging hub is a preparation environment tailored to advisors and sellers in M&A transactions. This tool allows oil and gas companies to collect and prepare the necessary due diligence documents without the pressure of the deal already being active. 
Image: Ideals’ staging hub feature
Due diligence checklist
A due diligence checklist is a list of documents an acquiring company requests from the target company in an M&A transaction. As a built-in data room feature, a due diligence checklist allows users to execute the following tasks:
- Upload and edit XLSX lists inside the built-in viewer.
- Collaborate on synced checklists with multiple stakeholders.
- Track checklist versions and user actions, such as uploads, edits, and downloads.
Image: Ideals’ due diligence checklist feature
Q&A module
A question-and-answer (Q&A) module allows data room customers to automate the exchange of questions between internal and external stakeholders, potential buyers in gas transactions, and vendors. The Q&A creates an opportunity to control the information flow, which is invaluable in complex energy transactions.
Ideals’ Q&A module offers five roles: question drafter, question submitter, answer coordinator, expert, and answer approver. This helps Q&A participants improve response times, prevent unauthorized communication, and provide precise, expertise-based answers.
Image: Ideals’ Q&A roles
Advanced user permissions
The energy sector is becoming an increasingly prominent target of cyber adversaries who exploit third-party access to critical data. A study of KPMG and SecurityScorecard has revealed that 90% of energy companies that suffered data breaches have security issues linked to third-party vendors. The risks of data breaches can be minimized with the use of granular access permissions.
Granular access permissions allow energy companies to control access to information stored inside the data room with a high degree of flexibility and precision. Ideals VDR offers eight levels of access permissions, giving oil and gas companies complete control of who can view and manage business-critical documents:
- No view
- Fence view
- View
- Encrypted download
- PDF download
- Original download
- Upload
- Manage
Image: Ideals’ access permissions
Information rights management (IRM) security
Information rights management (IRM) is an information protection mechanism that controls access to MS Office documents. It supports MS Word (DOC, DOCX), Excel (XLS, XLSX), and PowerPoint (PPT, PPTX) file formats.
Ideals’ data room administrators can enable IRM protection by granting ‘encrypted download’ permissions to desired files and folders. Users with ‘encrypted download’ rights will download IRM-encrypted versions of MS Office files with the following protection mechanisms:
- Authentication with VDR credentials is required when a user opens a locally saved IRM-encrypted document.
- Dynamic, user-specific watermarks are displayed.
- Screen capturing, copying, and saving changes are deactivated.
- Excel formulas are turned off (optionally).
Image: Ideals’ IRM-encrypted download feature
How does Ideals VDR maximize efficiency and security for oil and gas companies?
Ideals VDR successfully solves several challenges commonly faced by energy companies:
Responding to evolving cyber threats
The energy industry faces an increasing risk of cyberattacks and is among the most expensive sectors regarding data breach costs — 5.29 million USD compared to the 4.88 million USD average in 2024.
Source: IBM Cost of a Data Breach Report 2024
Regular file-sharing solutions leave energy companies inadequately equipped to protect business-critical information against cyber threats. In contrast, Ideals VDR provides powerful data protection features (in addition to IRM security and access permissions) that help companies minimize data breach risks:
- Artificial intelligence (AI) redaction
You can bulk-redact sensitive information in 20 supported file formats using Ideals’ AI-powered redaction module - IP and domain access restrictions
You can restrict access to specified IP addresses and corporate domains, preventing unauthorized traffic from reaching the data room - Email verification
VDR users must periodically confirm access to their corporate emails, minimizing the risks of unauthorized access from outdated or compromised emails - Two-factor authentication (2FA)
VDR users must verify their identity using a one-time passcode alongside login and password, which strengthens protection from the breach of credentials - Customer-managed data encryption keys
Ideals customers can opt to own end-to-end encryption keys, having greater control over how their data is encrypted and accessed - Single-sign-on (SSO)
VDR customers can opt for authentication through an identity management provider to minimize password fatigue and strengthen overall security.
Managing large data volumes
The World Economic Forum predicts that 181 zettabytes of data will be generated in 2025, a threefold increase from 2020. As data volumes grow, companies face increasing challenges in storing, organizing, and sharing vast amounts of information. Ideals VDR makes management of voluminous corporate data simple and efficient. Here is how:
- AI search
Ideals customers can quickly locate content inside folders and individual files using AI-powered optical character recognition (OCR) search - File tagging
File labels simplify data retrieval and make content navigation more structured and user-friendly - Full audit trail
Data room activity (over 70 actions) is tracked and transformed into digestible drill-down reports - Unlimited uploads
Ideals VDR doesn’t have file size and upload volume limits. Also, customers can import entire folder structures rather than individual files and folders - Unlimited projects
Customers can open unlimited projects and copy content across them.
Collaborating with multiple stakeholders
Collaborating with multiple stakeholders can be particularly complex in business transactions and data-intensive activities such as due diligence. Ideals streamlines collaboration and stakeholder management, offering more advanced capabilities than regular file-sharing solutions:
- User roles
Users are assigned predefined roles (administrator, user, custom), allowing for bulk user management - Group notes
Users can create private, public, and group notes, facilitating team communication - Q&A threads
Q&A participants can manage structured discussions and follow-ups through dedicated threads - Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) module
Ideals customers can create and manage FAQ libraries, reducing Q&A load and improving team communications - Enforceable terms of use
Upon VDR login, users must accept the organization’s terms of use, non-disclosure agreements (NDAs), and other applicable agreements.
Case study: Andra
Andra, the French national radioactive waste management agency, turned to Ideals VDR to manage the declaration of public utility under the Cigeo project, a deep geological disposal facility for radioactive waste.
Andra consistently communicated with governmental authorities, geological experts, and the general public. Anticipating high public interest in the Cigeo project, the agency sought a secure communication solution so it could have full control of the project data and the ability to scale storage to meet growing project demands.
Upon inspecting several VDR solutions, Andra turned to Ideals’ free trial data room and successfully launched the live project afterward. Ideals enabled Andra to:
- Secure communications
Andra employed dynamic watermarking, customizable permissions, and IRM security while handling communications with government agencies and legal advisors - Share large data volumes
Andra routinely exchanged hundreds of extensive reports with third-party experts while ensuring the confidentiality of technical data - Run multiple projects
Andra successfully launched over 14 projects on the Ideals data room platform and exchanged high volumes of technical data with over 380 stakeholders.
Ideals is very evolved technically in terms of problem-solving, document availability, and security management
Hervé Bienvenu
Head of Knowledge Management at Andra
Case study: Ignis
Ignis, one of Spain’s largest renewable energy developers, used Ideals VDR to execute a €200 million fundraising campaign. Founded in 2015, Ignis rapidly expanded to Europe, Asia, and the United States. To sustain its ambitious growth strategy, Ignis required additional funding and sought a secure and efficient way to communicate with potential investors.
The company needed robust access management capabilities to securely share business-critical information, control the communication flow, and automate query management. However, its document-sharing systems were insufficient for the task.
Everyone at Ignis could access the platform so anyone could edit documents, plus we were struggling to keep track of questions from potential bidders and who was answering them,
Laura Martínez Fúster
M&A Manager at Ignis
Upon inspecting several VDR solutions, Ignis decided to proceed with Ideals. Its simplicity, affordability, and comprehensive features made Ideals the perfect choice for supporting Ignis’ growth strategy. Ideals enabled Ignis to:
- Ensure secure document storage
Ignis secured investor communications using granular access permissions, document watermarking, and IRM security. Ignis fully controlled how, when, and who accessed its data. For example, Ignis could adjust permission levels based on investors’ engagement with the process - Control and automate a Q&A flow
Ignis built a custom Q&A arrangement that allowed it to auto-forward investor questions to its in-house experts and approvers, ensuring high control of negotiations - Save considerable costs
Bulk uploading, Q&A automation, activity tracking, and premium support services helped Ignis save eight hours per week in administrative time.
The bottom line
- A virtual data room allows oil and gas companies to control access to business-critical files, create role-based Q&A workflows, and efficiently operate large volumes of sensitive data.
- Companies in the energy sector typically use virtual data rooms in mergers and acquisitions (M&A), asset management, fundraising, licensing, and other data-intensive activities.
- Cybersecurity threats are rising in the energy industry, magnifying the need for oil and gas companies to secure business information.
- Ideals VDR excels in offering powerful data management capabilities and robust security features.
FAQ
Ideals VDR offers fortress-like security. Our advanced security features include eight levels of granular access permissions, information rights management (IRM) security, IP and domain restrictions, two-factor authentication (2FA), and file redaction.
Ideals customers can bulk-upload unlimited documents without size limits. You can upload entire folder structures and sync files with your preferred cloud storage and content management systems (CMS).
IP and domain restrictions allow data room administrators to restrict data room access to authorized IP addresses and domains. Connections from unauthorized addresses and domains will be blocked.
A fence view mode displays content to users with ‘fence view’ permissions using a ‘window blinds’ effect, making only a centered section of the document visible. This security feature deters unauthorized screen capturing, photography, and video recording.
Our customers can schedule a free demo or start a 30-day trial to test-drive VDR capabilities without committing to a paid subscription.