About Groove security

One of Groove's cornerstone features is its security. Groove provides security via the following features:

Password or Smart Card log-in protection.

You can secure your account either with a password or via a certificate stored on a Smart Card.

Passwords encrypt and integrity-protect your account. Groove automatically protects your data using random keys stored in (or derivable from keys stored in) your account.
Contact authentication. Groove supports two contact authentication processes:

Manual authentication, whereby you personally verify the digital fingerprints of contact identities. You manage the manual authentication of your contacts.
Certification, whereby a digital certificate is assigned to a contact identity by a certificate authority (such as those from VeriSign). Certification is administrator-managed authentication.

Roles and permissions. Roles are assigned to workspace members and specific permissions, such as reading or editing privileges.
Activation keys. Activation keys associate licenses with Groove accounts.
Virus scanning. If you have a supported virus scanning program installed on your computer, you can enable an account preference to scan all incoming and outgoing files for viruses. For information on supported virus scanning programs, see Groove system requirements on groove.net.
Communications "tagged" with your identity. All of your memberships in workspaces, as well as any message or invitation you send, is cryptographically "tagged" with your Groove identity. Invitation and message recipients can authenticate your identity based on this information.
Encrypted communications. All updates you make in a standard workspace are encrypted when you send them and then decrypted when they are received to ensure that only other members of the workspace will be able to read them. Instant messages are also encrypted and then decrypted in the same manner. All information sent and received by Groove is confidentiality protected.

Note: Security for file sharing workspaces depends on the security measures you have set for your Windows operating system.
Encrypted temporarily stored data. Information you send may sometimes be stored temporarily on a server (for example, if the intended recipient of the information is not currently online), but that information is always encrypted using keys not known to the server.
Component authentication. Groove's component signing feature allows users to authenticate the tool publisher before installing a tool.
Enterprise policies. Centrally administered policies that allow Groove administrators to configure policies that are then enforced at the client and end user level.

Groove privacy policy

Your privacy is important to us. You can read Groove's privacy policy on groove.net.