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Your Company Secrets Exposed:
Part Two - Fixing the Problem, Removing Confidential Metadata
In the May newsletter we reviewed the Dangers of Metadata and how various types of Metadata can expose your organization to a number of painful consequences. To quickly review, Metadata is hidden information in files that if distributed can lead to embarrassment, network security risks, and other unpleasant outcomes.
"Not dealing with metadata problems among groups of users that have a high risk of accidentally sending harmful metadata outside the enterprise can have expensive consequences."
— Gartner Group
Even the SEC has weighed in on Metadata, stating that “Extra care should be taken to ensure that only the final versions of documents are posted (on the Web site). Documents should also be cleansed of all metadata or other internal codes before posting to avoid the accidental disclosure of hidden data.”
So what can be done to prevent the accidental distribution of document metadata?
At the organizational level:
- Put policies in place with guidelines on the safe sharing and distribution of documents and files.
- Train users with respect to the risk and removal of metadata.
- Implement software solutions to facilitate the removal of metadata.
At the user level:
- Turn off the “Allow fast saves” option in Microsoft Office applications.
- Also, in MS Office, there is an option to remove personal information from a file and warn you when a document has tracked changes or comments before saving, printing, or sending a file.
- Use Microsoft’s “Remove Hidden Data” tool (for Office 2003 and Office XP 2003) http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?kbid=834427
- Purchase a metadata removal application to be installed locally on your own machine, such as Metadata Assistant or Workshare Protect.
- Avoid distributing documents externally in their original file format – save/publish them as PDFs using Adobe Acrobat. Saving files as PDFs keeps the original document’s layout and content intact while stripping out much of the metadata.
- Take PDF conversion one step further. Another way to further limit the transfer of information to Acrobat is to modify the defaults of Acrobat's one-button PDF Creators. In your Office Application go to the Adobe PDF Menu and choose Change Conversion Settings. Deselect "Convert Document Information" and click OK. This will limit the transfer of document metadata to just the title of the document.
- Or use the following PDF conversion for the security fanatic: save your PDF as a TIFF file (this will turn the document into an image and strip out all data in the file). From the File menu choose “Save As” and then select TIFF.
It’s worth your time to take a few extra steps and remove metadata from documents; not doing it could involve the press, the SEC, lawyers, and potentially a trip to the unemployment office.
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