Breaches of security via data hidden in electronic documents are making the headlines across the world.

“Error by FTC Reveals Whole Foods' Trade Secrets”

In 2007, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) electronically filed PDF documents as part of a court case involving Whole Foods Market’s proposed $565 million takeover of Wild Oats Markets. Unfortunately these documents accidentally revealed confidential information on Whole Foods’ marketing strategies. The documents contained sections that looked redacted but were just shaded black and were easy to recover with a “Save As” or “Copy/Paste”.

“When Words Come Back from the Dead”

Merck, a large pharmaceutical company, revealed details in “tracked changes” regarding drug details that were highly relevant to thousands of multi-million dollar legal cases. The result was a beleaguered reputation and a $598M legal defence fund.
What would be the impact to you if confidential information leaked? At the least it would cause embarrassment, but it could also lead to substantial financial loss.

In this paper 3BView looks at the risk of leakage of information via electronic documents, and in particular at the information that is stored behind the content of a typical Microsoft Word document; the use of this information for collaborative generation of documents; and how a PDF should be generated if this format is used for distributing documents.

The paper introduces 3BClean, a solution that automatically removes such ‘metadata’, be it transparently to the user via emails, or on import or export to/from a content or document management system (CMS/DMS), or on a per document basis under the user’s control. 3BClean is a server-based product from 3BView that provides a reliable and scalable solution to ensure document and information security.