Document Security

Posted on by Info-Tech

  In today’s interconnected economy, intellectual property is the lifeblood of many organizations, but a variety of dangers from both inside and outside the firewall threatens to compromise and expose critical information, trade secrets, and other confidential information. Fortunately, security-minded organizations have an array of tools at their disposal to ensure document-level security. Info-Tech’s research shows that companies need to begin their document security initiatives with a robust trust assessment that determines how integral adequate security is to ongoing operations.

When documents are only shared internally with trusted partners, a basic private key solution can usually meet your needs (for example, the built in password-protection feature found in Microsoft Office). At low-level trust requirements, IT departments must steer clear of overinvestment in a solution. However, as sensitive documents are shared with a large number of external partners (i.e. customers and suppliers) a high level of trust in the integrity of the documents must be maintained. A full-featured document security suite based on public-key cryptography (like Adobe LiveCycle) provides encryption functionality and other granular controls that protect documents both inside and outside the firewall. Common feature sets include timed expirations, remote lockdown, and variable user-level read/write privileges.

The document security space is being impacted by two key trends: the rise of “pay-by-the-drink” cloud-based solutions and the massive growth of touch-enabled platforms, like the iPad. The ubiquity of touch-centric devices promises to revolutionize e-approval processes, accelerating contract approval cycle times by eliminating the need for paper-based methods.

For more information, see the solution set Build a Strategy for Document Security and Electronic Approval.

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