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    Anchor Known Limitations
    • 09 Jun 2023
    • 4 Minutes to read
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    Anchor Known Limitations

    • Updated on 09 Jun 2023
    • 4 Minutes to read
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    Article Summary

    Known limitations to be addressed in future releases. 
    1.  Possible data corruption when using the xcopy command on Windows 10 (update KB5025221) and Windows 11
      1. If you are running Anchor version 5.2.1 or earlier, you may encounter corrupted files when copying files to a network share using the xcopy Command Prompt/Powershell utility. This may also happen with other applications that use the Windows CopyFileEx API. This bug has been fixed in Anchor version 5.3.0+. We strongly recommend updating Anchor to version 5.3.0 as soon as possible.
    2. Anchored Files
      1. Printing: It is possible to physically print Anchored files when non-Microsoft Office Applications open them. Anchor administrators may restrict all printing options (physical and digital) for Anchored files opened by Microsoft Office applications. You can manage this in the Anchor Dashboard.
      2. Saving: 
        1. Save as protection is only available for Anchor Certified Applications. 
        2. Users will be allowed to save data into or out of Anchored folders using Anchor admin-approved applications (More Information)
        3. Anchor-certified non-Microsoft applications (Acrobat Reader, Phantom PDF, LibreOffice, Wordpad, Irfanview Image Viewer).

          Users cannot save data into or out of Anchored folders. 
          1. Example: Anchor will block the following action - A user opens an unAnchored (plain text) file located in a folder not protected by Anchor, then attempts to save the file into an Anchored folder.
          2. Example: Anchor will block the following action - A user opens an Anchored file in an Anchored folder and attempts to “Save-As” into a folder not protected by Anchor.
    3. Cloud Drives:
      1. OneDrive and SharePoint: In the rare situation where Anchor's automatic encryption service fails to encrypt the newly added file, the file will remain unencrypted until the user edits and saves the file in the same location.
      2. Box: If you change Box drive configurations (e.g., Box drive location) while Anchor is installed and running, then you must restart Anchor services. Otherwise, the Box configuration changes will not come into effect.
      3. Note: For files stored on networked drives like Windows Server. The Anchor server agent will encrypt the newly added file(s) even if Anchor sync fails to encrypt the file.
    4. Data Loss Protection:
      1. Copy/Paste Controls: When copy/paste blocking is enabled, the user can only copy and paste in the same file. When an Anchored file(s) are open, the Anchor will not allow content to be moved from one file to another. (More Information) (Internal team) 
      2. Screenshot Tool Blocking: When screenshot tool blocking is enabled, Anchor will not allow taking screenshots using default windows screenshot tools. (More Information) 
      3. Note: It is possible to take a screenshot using other 3rd party tools when screenshot tool blocking is enabled.
    5. Anchor Services:
      1. File extensions and authorized applications: if the user opens an UnAnchored (plain text) file with an unauthorized extension using an Anchor-authorized application and saves the file. Anchor will encrypt the file when it is saved. For example: if .xml is not an authorized extension, but you open it within Microsoft Word (a certified application) and then save the file, Anchor will protect the saved output. Note: This behavior will only occur on Anchored folders. 
      2. Microsoft Office protections: Should the Anchor Microsoft Office add-in be disabled (by the user or unintended actions), Anchor services will not allow any Anchored files to be consumed.
    6. Installing and Uninstalling Anchor:
      • If configured, Anchor allows individual users to protect the folders they choose. Should Anchor be uninstalled and then reinstalled, personal protected folders beyond what is configured by Anchor Administrators in the dashboard will be lost or not restored.  Files are not lost, and the protection remains when Anchor is uninstalled.
    7. Anchor Operations
      1. Anchor can't anchor(encrypt) read-only files.
    8. Source Code Protection:
      • In very rare cases, the Git clone command fails when users try to clone the Git repository with more than 10k files in the Anchor-protected folder. Users must delete the Git repo folder from the Anchor-protected folder and retry the Git clone to mitigate this issue. Open the folder and confirm all the files are Anchored.
    9. OneDrive File Collaboration on Desktops:
      • When installing the Anchor agent on your desktop, the Office tab in the OneDrive sync agent will intentionally be disabled. File Collaboration is disabled to prevent the leak of plain text data in OneDrive versioning.
    10. Adding apps downloaded from the Microsoft App Store as authorized applications:
      • Currently, applications that are downloaded from the Microsoft App Store cannot be added to the Administrator dashboard as authorized applications. This is because by the process paths are not visible to Anchor.
    11. Connecting to a WiFi SSID containing special characters:
      • Using Anchor while being connected to a Wifi SSID containing special characters will cause performance issues in our services. Connecting to an SSID that does not contain special characters or renaming the SSID to remove special characters is the best practice.(User experience)
    12. Anchor By Process:
      1. AxP Process will not anchor the following extensions:

            ["dll", L"exe", L"bat", L"rdp", L"iso", L"atcf", L"lib", L"wbk", L"msi", L"ini”]

        The user must work in a protected folder for their files to be anchored.

      2. Files anchored via Anchor by Process do not show comprehensive access logs. The local access logs will only show where the file was Anchored, however, the full logs are still held in our secure cloud.
    13. Airplane Mode:
      • Users can also "save as" an Anchored file from an offline access folder to a non-protected folder. But the user won't be able to open that file from the non-protected folder. Anchor doesn't check context when the user is in offline mode.
    14. Network Drives:
      • Currently, Anchor doesn't support adding a DFS path as a protected folder on Admin Dashboard.
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