About CTERA Drive Share and CTERA Drive Protect (Agent)

CTERA provides a software application that is installed on local PCs and connected directly to your account on the CTERA Portal. The software runs on Windows and macOS platforms and, depending on the license, provides either or both of the following:

• CTERA Drive Share enables you to sync files to the CTERA Portal global file system in the cloud to provide enterprise file sync and share (EFSS), enabling you to sync to selected folders and their files on your portal Cloud Drive and share those files.
• CTERA Drive Protect enables you to back up files to the CTERA Portal global file system in the cloud, which provides cloud-based backup, restore, and disaster recovery.

CTERA Drive Share and CTERA Drive Protect together are referred to as CTERA Agent.

CTERA Agent incorporates multiple layered security features to ensure that your data is protected whether in transit or at rest:

• CTERA Agent uses cryptographic libraries certified with FIPS 140-2.
• All data is encrypted before it is sent to the cloud using AES-256 encryption and remains encrypted as it is stored.
• All WAN transfers use Transport Level Security (TLS) protocol over the WAN, preventing unauthorized interception of data transfers.

CTERA Agent on Windows Platforms

On a Windows platform, you can configure the agent as a Caching Agent, whereby all your cloud drive content in the portal, cloud folders you own and the files and folders shared with you under Shared With Me, are presented as stubs on your workstation's local disk. You do not need to explicitly sync a certain folder, as the cloud drive folder structure and files are automatically visible on the local disk. However, the actual content of the files might not be there, and is downloaded from the portal on demand. This allows full visibility of your entire data, while utilizing a very small amount of local disk space: The main storage remains in the cloud with stubs saved locally. A stub is a file with a tiny footprint that contains the metadata about the file, such as the file name, size, and modification date. Only the folder and file metadata and not the actual file content is saved locally. When a user accesses a file stub, the file is opened without delay, by streaming the file content from the cloud. After the download has completed, the file is unstubbed. Any changes to the file are synced back to the portal. Files that are always required locally can be pinned, in which case they, and not the stubs, are stored locally.