How Westend Junior Protects the Data of its Young Artists

Stichting Westend Junior is a dutch, validated non-profit organization aimed at introducing young people (< 18 years) to the magic of the theatre, both off- as well as on-stage. They do so by allowing kids to participate in musical productions written for children / young adults but in a “real” theatre and for an adult audience.

We talked to Menno Smits who, together with Shirley Breuren, co-founded Westend Junior in 2015. Since then, he has been one of the driving forces behind the project. He also was the one who made sure that all important data of their young musical artists would be protected with encryption by Boxcryptor in the future.

An interview with Menno Smits of Stichting Westend Junior

How did you first find out about Boxcryptor?

I’ve stumbled upon Boxcryptor already some years ago as an easy-to-implement solution to transfer data from a home-environment to a work-environment (Citrix) in a secure fashion using a public cloud storage.

Why did you decide to use Boxcryptor?

Our organization stores sensitive data of minors on a cloud storage (Google Drive). Although this is a secure system, we cannot guarantee that the data storage is adhering to the standards required by the Dutch AVG-regulation (Algemene Verordening Gegevensbescherming or GDPR).

Boxcryptor gives us the ability to store highly privacy-sensitive data on Google Drive in a secure and AVG-safe manner, whilst maintaining the ability to share data with all staff members of our organization.

How did you experience the onboarding phase?

After a successful small-scale pilot, we are currently in the process of rolling out the implementation. We have not encountered any problems so far.

How do you use Boxcryptor in your every day’s work?

Boxcryptor is only used by key-staff members that need access to the sensitive data.

Why is Boxcryptor essential for your organization?

It helps us to assure that the data we store on our members is safe and cannot be compromised in ways beyond our control.

Protecting and safeguarding the data we store is vital for gaining the trust of the parents of our members; we take this very seriously.

To whom would you recommend Boxcryptor?

You should ask yourself the question if it mattered to you, should the data you store on your cloud drive be published freely on the internet. If you feel even the slightest hesitation in answering that question, you need a product like Boxcryptor. Period.