If sending a non-disclosure agreement (commonly known as an NDA) is part of your routine, you’ve probably pictured it at one point or another. We’re talking about sending out confidential materials and realizing you didn’t protect yourself by getting an NDA signed first.
Let’s say you’re working in business development, recruiting, or another externally-facing capacity. You’ve just sent a presentation with sensitive materials to a prospective hire or BD partner. You forgot to send an NDA agreement, and you’ve just realized this in a rush of panic.
What can you do to fix it? Is there anything you can do to fix it? Let’s dive in.
What to do if you forgot to send an NDA
If you’ve forgotten to send an NDA, promptly and professionally ask them to sign a retroactive NDA. Be sure to adjust NDA phrasing and language accordingly, to accommodate retroactive consumption of sensitive information.
Before you put this plan into action, however, you need to cover your bases. First, you should reach out to legal counsel, share the existing NDA language, and get feedback on required changes. Then, and only then, reach out to the party or parties in question.
If the party or parties in question sign the revised NDA, you’re in luck.
If the party or parties in question do not agree to sign the revised NDA, there’s unfortunately not much you can do. In this scenario, the best practice is to mitigate consequences. Therefore, you should discuss the situation with your team and establish a plan in case consequences manifest.
Guaranteed NDAs going forward
If the party does not agree to sign a revised NDA after being exposed to confidential materials, it’s important to ensure that your team responds in the best possible way for your business. No matter what you decide your optimal response should be, it must involve a prevention measure, to ensure you never forget to send an NDA in the future.
When sending your confidential materials with DocSend’s Advanced Plan, safeguarding your documents with an NDA is as simple as clicking “Require NDA to view.”
Uploading and preparing your NDA is simple: You can upload an NDA for your company to use with just a few clicks. (You can also use this NDA template to create one.) When you share a link with One-Click NDA enabled, every document visitor must sign your NDA, even if someone new attempts to access your materials.
Forget to require the NDA in DocSend? Don’t panic
Let’s say you’re in a rush (again), and you somehow forget to require an executed NDA when creating the link to share confidential materials.
Don’t panic—there’s good news! Before, you were subject to a nasty leak of high-security information. With DocSend, all you have to do is turn off the link. All access granted by that link will be temporarily (or permanently, if you choose) severed. Once you’ve turned off the link, you should consult the document analytics history to see who has accessed it.
If the materials have been accessed, you can see who accessed which materials. In this case, you will still have to consult with your legal counsel, but you’ll at least have a confirmed audit trail of who has accessed what.
If the materials have not been accessed, all you have to do is require an NDA in the link settings! Then, you can turn the link back on—and the best part? No frantic legal sessions, and no nail biting wait to hear back from a prospect. In other words, with just a few quick clicks, you’ll be rightfully in control of your documents again.
Does all this sound like a great way to safeguard your confidential materials moving forward? (It should.) Click here to get started with DocSend’s Advanced Plan for free.
Not quite ready to seal the deal? Click here to learn more about secure document sharing with DocSend. You can also click here to learn more about DocSend’s document analytics offerings.
