A recent incident in the news illustrates a common problem with sensitive and confidential information. People can and do make mistakes when it comes to properly handling personally identifiable information (PII).
According to news reports, insurance documents from 1996 and 1997 were accidentally placed into a Tooele County, Utah employee’s personnel file. The documents had names and Social Security numbers that were not his. The information had been misfiled a long time ago and was scanned to an electronic version.
When he was terminated from his job, he asked for his employee file. He got everything on a CD and discovered the insurance documents. He contacted the state Attorney General’s office since he knew something was wrong. He wondered how many other people may have PII in their files and was concerned for his privacy.
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eDocument Sciences joined with Fasoo.com and its partners ACT Solutions, Brite Computers, Ricoh and Toshiba this year at the RSA Conference 2013 in San Francisco. The booth was very busy with a lot of customers interested in ways to protect the most important information in their businesses. This years themes focused on protecting data from mobile up to the cloud. Fasoo had a lot of new graphics in the booth and some interactive demos and videos showing just how to stop data breaches and keep your business safe.
Just like last year, the talk of the floor was about all the unauthorized intrusions and hacking going on as more sophisticated attacks continue from governments and rogue organizations. Stealing medical information has become very big business as discussed in a few of the sessions. Just in the last few days, Evernote was added to the list of high profile attacks as hackers stole email addresses and passwords. While there is still a lot of talk about perimeter security solutions, a lot of companies are realizing that they need to worry more about their data and not the perimeter. If you build a higher wall, the bad guys will just bring a taller ladder.
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We write frequently on this blog about the risk of loss of confidential information from internal trusted sources. The loss of sensitive information can be due to individuals wishing to do harm to an organization, for financial gain or because of “carelessness”.
Nothing could illustrate this better than what is playing out this week in Washington D.C. with General Petraeus at the CIA. If anyone should have known about the impact of divulging confidential information you would think it would be the Director of the CIA! Apparently nothing can stop someone with an out of control libido from sharing sensitive information.
The part that really shocks me is the fact that Petraeus and Paula Broadwell would use electronic communication to carry on their affair. However instead of actually emailing each other, they would compose and draft messages but not send them. The other person would then log into the same account and read the drafts. This made those messages harder to trace, and the tactic has been used in the past by terrorists.
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Property comes in in two forms: tangible and intangible. Most of us understand that tangible property is something real and physical, like a car or a computer. Intangible property describes something you can own and can transfer that ownership to another person or corporation, but has no physical substance. An example is a copyright.
Intellectual property (IP) refers to creations of the mind for which exclusive rights are recognized in law. Under IP law, owners are granted certain exclusive rights to intangible assets, such as literary works, discoveries, inventions, symbols, phrases, and designs. IP can include patents, copyrights, customer lists, trademarks, business processes, and acquired know-how. The secret recipe for Coca Cola is a good example.
Ensuring that your IP doesn’t walk out the door is just as important as making sure people don’t steal computers or desks. Where would Coke be without its secret formula or Microsoft without the source code to Windows?
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There is a small revolution going on in the printer world. It’s not the traditional world of putting ink or toner onto a piece of paper, but the ability to create a three dimensional object. We’ve seen replicators in science fiction stories for decades, but now science fact has almost caught up to fiction.
3D printers work like an ink printer. Rather than using ink, they typically use a type of polymer. They spray a thin layer of the polymer and create an object layer by layer. Think of it like building something out of Legos. You add layer upon layer until you build your object.
These printers are now making it into the consumer world as hobbyists are very excited about producing replacement parts for devices or creating their own devices from scratch. The recent Maker Faire in New York was awash in 3D printers. These printers create the objects by using CAD files to guide them. Many companies produce open source CAD files or those licensed under Creative Commons, so that anyone can print parts or complete objects.
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