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Workshare Announces Sponsorship Of Metadatarisk.org
SecurityProNews
Staff Writer
2004-08-23
 Security News RSS Feed
Metadata continues to taint content and the reputations of those that create it, forcing companies and individuals to take action.
At the forefront of preventing this type of embarrassing and potentially dangerous information leak is Workshare, which today announced its sponsorship of a new Web site, http://www.metadatarisk.org, a public-benefit content security resource developed to help companies and individuals evaluate their risk from sensitive information hidden in their content and learn how to protect themselves from exposure.
Metadata is the hidden but potentially threatening information that lives and travels within every genre of content, from basic documents and spreadsheets to presentations and Web copy. Metadata even resides in a variety of multimedia files. Generally, this information is the title, author, date of origin, content, size and location of a document that is logged to help categorize electronic information. Corrections, comments, deletions and other information stored in track changes also get locked in metadata. Unless this information, which is often confidential or sensitive, is actively removed, it can leak to unintended audiences. As recent headlines about metadata gaffes by The SCO Group, the British intelligence community and the California Attorney General have shown, the repercussions are often serious.
"The dangers of metadata are a growing concern as businesses continually rely on electronic communications," stated Joe Fantuzzi, president and CEO of Workshare. "The numbers of people affected by an accidental slip of sensitive metadata are rapidly increasing, making content security a growing priority for content creators and IT teams alike. Metadatarisk.org will help identify the risks for today's workers, allowing them to do their job efficiently and keep their content secure without having to worry about the hidden information they may be sending out to co-workers, competitors or clients."
Metadatarisk.org will help today's content creators and distributors protect themselves from sharing metadata by offering the following tools:
* Metafind: Visitors to the site can download free software that gives them the opportunity to type in their URL and see first hand some of the dangerous metadata that may be found floating on their Web site.
* Content Security Assessment: Users will have the opportunity to find out their metadata risk level based on a survey of their own content practices.
* Community Forum: Visitors can submit stories, best practices and advice on how to deal with metadata risk. Visitors will also be able to submit content security and metadata questions to be answered by industry experts.
* Top Tips: Metadatarisk.org will provide advice from metadata and document security experts, industry analysts and everyday practitioners on how to remove and keep sites clean from this potentially flawing material. Articles written by journalists in the field investigating the side effects of released metadata will also be available online.
About the Author:
SecurityProNews is a daily online and email publication focusing on internet security issues.
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