never-ever-****-with-my.net

Intelligence Online published a nice article (free registration required) on solutions to protect against the leaking of confidential data:

"Since early 2000 a number of American and Israeli start-ups have been offering solutions to protect against the leaking of confidential data. Initially based only on the search for keywords, the technology has evolved and now allows for the creation of digital fingerprints for any type of file (text, images, video, etc.). (...) A recent study by the U.S. firm Gartner estimated the market as being worth $60 million in 2006 and predicted it would increase five-fold by 2009. One after the other, two Israeli firms have been snapped up by industry heavyweights: McAfee acquired Onigma in October and WebSense finalized the acquisition of PortAuthority on Jan. 9. France’s Advestigo, the lone European player on the market - it was founded in 2002 by two former Atomic Energy Commission employees - is seeking a financial partner to boost its international sales."

As reported by Computerworld, the US Army is using SRS Technologies' Document Detective to sanitize documents and avoid inadvertent exposure of sensitive or extraneous information.

The product's functionalities clearly go beyond metadata cleansing (i.e. Microsoft's free Remove Hidden Data tool for Office) as it is possible to convert embedded objects into safer object types (i.e. when an entire Excel workbook ends up in a PowerPoint presentation although you only intended to paste a summary chart). Document Detective also implements workflows to transfer documents from one security domain to another.

It should be noted that SRS Technologies maintains a suggested reading list that contains articles and information regarding electronic document security and incidents that occurred because of improper or incomplete reviews.

Update 2006/10/14: Marco Casario points out a number of interesting resources to remove sensitive information from Acrobat PDF documents. In particular, have a look at Adobe's Technical Note on Redaction of Confidential Information in Electronic Documents (Acrobat PDF).

As reported by Computerworld, Gartner warns the latest version of Google Desktop poses security risks, as Google's servers may store an index of the files contained on the workstation where it is installed.

The workaround is to install the enterprise version, which lets IT administrators decide which features should be enabled or not (using GPOs).

Likewise, an enterprise version exists for the latest version of Google Toolbar (still in beta), and lets IT admins deactivate sensitive functions (i.e. PageRank display or AutoFill).