Risk Mitigation 

With the arrival of the Internet, documents are written and exchanged electronically between companies, typically by email, as well as being ‘published’ onto websites. With the original documents now being shared, information leakage is a very real risk, as the software is not designed to prevent it. In addition, the security problems are new and not well known to most companies, so it’s easy for workers to accidentally leak information. A large number of high profile incidents highlight that such leakage can occur through ‘hidden data’ such as tracked changes or authors within office documents.

Enterprises and Government agencies are now taking action and investing to extract hidden data, to mitigate the risks of regulatory fines or litigation, and to protect their reputation and brand.

Damage to Public profile

Failure to automate hidden data removal can cause damage to the reputation and brand of an enterprise, as was illustrated by the recent high profile incident involving Google and eBay

This widely reported incident also highlights the risks faced by relying on supposedly “secure” PDF media, and that an increasing number of interested parties are able to expose this sensitive data.

Commercial impact

Merck, a large pharmaceutical company, was hit by numerous lawsuits, one costing the company in the region of $250 million. A determining factor in the findings is attributed to a deleted table in a Microsoft Word document linking the drug concerned to an increased risk of heart attacks.

International outcry

Arguably the ultimate situation to avoid; with the most infamous example now known as, the 'Dodgy Dossier'. The dossier was published online by Tony Blair’s office regarding Iraq’s security and intelligence capabilities. Extracting information stored by Microsoft Word on the last 10 editors revealed that much of the material was from unattributed sources one of which was a US PhD Student.

Mitigate the risk with 3BClean

Solution overview:

• Wide service spectrum - supports any email client and email server (Blackberry, PDA, iPhone and Webmail)
• Multiple format support -includes MS Office, OpenDocument Format and PDF
• Automated system with low operational costs - metadata is removed automatically according to centrally set rules. No User training is required, or ongoing technical support which substantially reduces the application lifecycle costs.
• Reduced risk of leakage - no User intervention is required, which ensures a consistent service level, and reduces the risks of inadvertent data leakage .
• Improved User experience – the automated system provides a service that is transparent to the User, and works reliably, out of sight, on the company network. Removing metadata from documents is a processor intensive application for desktop or laptop computers, which can cause users issues, and severely degrade employee productivity. Transferring this processing to the network or via SaaS is therefore especially important for organisations that send large quantities of documents via email.
• Ease of Integration – well documented APIs enable ease of integration into Data Loss Prevention (DLP) systems and Document and Content Management Systems.
• Conversion to Secure PDF – option to generate a secured PDF prior to final document distribution