Vitrium Systems

In a few short years, cloud computing has become a common technology. Recently, Deloitte conducted a survey which found that 40 percent of participating mid-market executives identified the cloud as a key area of technological investment, up from 29 percent the year before. Everyday, millions of individuals and organizations use the cloud to send emails and store data – many without even realizing that they're making use of this new technology.

However, ignorance is no substitute for security, and as TechCloud9's Martin Banks recently highlighted, many cloud users' information may potentially be accessed and utilized by vendors if document protection is not enacted.

Banks points out that Google, which recently released a new cloud storage service called Drive, has a service contract that essentially claims Google's right to "use, host, store, reproduce, modify…communicate [and] publish" user content, among other procedures. To use Google's cloud service, individuals or businesses must agree to these terms. And Google is not the only vendor to implement such policies.

That is why industry experts argue that users should take steps to encrypt their cloud-stored data. Doing so protects the data from being accessed by others, even if the service provider's service agreement grants them the right to view it.

The cloud offers significant benefits to organizations of all sizes. It can reduce costs, improve internal and external communications and make a variety of other business functions more efficient. Additionally, because cloud services are not dependent on in-house hardware, businesses can reduce the risks of over- or under-investing that often accompanies the purchase of new tech equipment.

The advantages of the cloud are not lost on company managers. A recent study by Deloitte of 528 U.S. mid-market executives found that 40 percent believe the cloud and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) are among the most important areas for technology investment in 2012. Last year, only 29 percent of respondents felt this way.

However, moving operations to the cloud entails significant document security risks, as technology expert Steve Bailey recently highlighted. Writing for AME Info, he argued that these risks require that organizations considering a move to the cloud modernize their backup and recovery protocols. If a company fails to adequately prepare its data management processes before adopting virtualization, Bailey pointed out, it will likely experience a large number of data-related issues, both major and minor.

With its wide range of applications, the cloud offers potential benefits for virtually anyone. The cloud has such great utility that many businesses are currently making use of the technology. Even companies that are wary of cloud computing are beginning to use it, as TechRepublic recently highlighted.

According to the news source, IT departments frequently adopt cloud services despite their CIO's belief that the company is completely cloud-free, simply because the technology has become so inevitably intertwined with enterprise operations.

However, while the cloud is an undoubtedly useful piece of technology, it is also presents security risks that must be addressed.

According to Ian Paul of PCWorld, one of the best practices for ensuring document security in the cloud is encryption. This is due to the fact that data stored in the cloud is housed on a vendor's servers along with other client data. Consequently, there is a risk that another user may somehow gain access to that information.

By using PDF protection to encrypt files prior to storing them in the cloud, a business or individual can significantly reduce the chances that data will end up in an unauthorized user's hands.

Recently, The Center for Responsible Enterprise and Trade (CREATe) released a report highlighting the financial impact of intellectual property theft on U.S. businesses. According to the organization, intellectual property theft is a major problem for U.S. enterprises, costing billions of dollars each year as well as immeasurable damage to companies' reputations and ability to compete in difficult markets.

In response to this report, the Obama administration is creating a campaign centered on uniting the public and private sectors to improve organizations' document security and data protection processes, the Wall Street Journal reports. The goal of this initiative is to cut down on the scale of international trade secret and intellectual property theft. 

Robert Hormats, undersecretary of State for economic growth, energy and the environment, called trade secret theft a "threat to the core of the American economy." However, he also stated that the U.S. government alone cannot be responsible for protecting the intellectual property of American businesses. Therefore, it is crucial that private companies work with the government and each other to improve and implement preventative measures.

The Global Congress on Intellectual Property and the Public Interest's Washington Declaration addresses many concerns public and private observers of copyright law have about the future. Governments, particularly the United States, exert a lot of control over how information is shared and distributed on the internet. As such, it's important for the right values to guide legislators as they apply international agreements and congressional laws to balancing freedom of speech with copyright principles. Consider some of the following points the Global Congress stressed in its August 2011 declaration.

Institutions of memory
One of the most important roles data and intellectual property play in society is the transmission of art and information. However, there will also always be a need for document protection of some kind, since there is a fine line between proprietary copyrighted material and media of cultural import. Therefore, governments should always take into account the rights of institutions of memory, such as museums, schools and archives when drafting copyright laws.

Contracts and protection
Copyright law has spent very little time in a single form in the United States. It has changed quite a bit from the first U.S. Copyright Act of 1790, and one of the most common shifts that has taken place in regards to this kind of regulation is the length of copyright terms. The Global Congress urges leaders to avoid lengthy and unfair copyright protection on certain types of media, which is one of the contributing factors to data piracy and the need for document DRM.

Patents
Schematics and designs for processes and mechanisms are some of the most highly sought after forms of intellectual property. Unfortunately, as the Washington Declaration outlines, this can move science and progress away from incentivizing patents themselves and toward the technology they describe. The declaration calls for a reform of this framework, which has led to many frivolous legal battles and causes trade information such as patents to require PDF security and other media protection tools standard.

Flexibility
Above all, the Global Congress feels national governments need to maintain flexibility when it comes to intellectual property. The suppression of the free exchange of ideas the internet encourages can be detrimental to businesses and individual citizens. What's more, the adoption of rigid standards across the world and throughout single countries may not be the best fit for a particular region. Instead, document protection can be tailored to certain needs so access is determined more by user privilege than geographic orientation.
 

A new study suggests that while hospitals and other healthcare organizations strive to meet regulatory compliance standards, some are coming up short when it comes to actually protecting patient data.

The Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society study included 250 senior health information and data security officers who, when asked to rate their organizations' compliance with state security laws on a scale of one to seven, gave themselves an average score of 6.41.

However, despite this degree of compliance, more than a quarter of participants experienced a security breach in the past 12 months, and 45 percent said that a lack of hospital security management policies puts sensitive data at risk of exposure.

Several recent incidents have demonstrated the degree of this vulnerability. Most notably, last month hackers accessed more than 750,000 Medicaid patients' data following a breach at the Utah Department of Health.

As this incident suggests, it is important for healthcare organizations to implement more rigorous document protection policies, such as encryption and stricter limitation of employee access to sensitive files.

Cloud computing has quickly established itself as a vital business and IT tool. Experts agree that the cloud's utility is not limited to technology-based companies, but is rather useful for organizations from virtually any industry. In a recent study of 3,000 small to medium-sized businesses (SMB) in 13 countries, Microsoft found that the number of small companies using at least one cloud service is likely to increase by 300 percent over the next three years.

However, while the cloud delivers significant benefits to organizations that incorporate the technology into their operations, it also carries significant risks. As MacWorld recently highlighted, numerous industry analysts believe that the current level of cloud security offered by vendors puts users' data at significant risk.

The source reported that managed service provider CenterBeam conducted tests on cloud providers and found that some did not sufficiently segregate virtual servers running on shared hard disks. Consequently, a cyberattacker could potentially access fragments of data from any organizations that use a given disk.

To improve the document security of information stored in the cloud, experts recommend that organizations encrypt their data. Doing so protects the information even in the event that it is accessed by a cyberattacker.

Cloud computing has quickly established itself as a vital business and IT tool. Experts agree that the cloud's utility is not limited to technology-based companies, but is rather useful for organizations from virtually any industry. In a recent study of 3,000 small to medium-sized businesses (SMB) in 13 countries, Microsoft found that the number of small companies using at least one cloud service is likely to increase by 300 percent over the next three years.

However, while the cloud delivers significant benefits to organizations that incorporate the technology into their operations, it also carries significant risks. As MacWorld recently highlighted, numerous industry analysts believe that the current level of cloud security offered by vendors puts users' data at significant risk.

The source reported that managed service provider CenterBeam conducted tests on cloud providers and found that some did not sufficiently segregate virtual servers running on shared hard disks. Consequently, a cyberattacker could potentially access fragments of data from any organizations that use a given disk.

To improve the document security of information stored in the cloud, experts recommend that organizations encrypt their data. Doing so protects the information even in the event that it is accessed by a cyberattacker.

The Center for Responsible Enterprise and Trade (CREATe) recently released a report highlighting the growing risk of intellectual property theft for businesses in the United States.

Intellectual property theft costs U.S. businesses billions of dollars each year and "can have devastating reputational, financial, and legal impacts for individual companies and the global economy as a whole," says CREATe president and CEO Pamela Passman. The report states that intangible assets, such as intellectual property, account for approximately three-quarters of most organizations' value and sources of revenue. Consequently, failure to protect these assets is a major issue for many firms.

To highlight the potential damage of intellectual property theft, the report cites the case of an automotive engineer who copied 4,000 documents onto an external hard drive before leaving his company to work for a competitor. According to the original employer, this theft cost the company more than $50 million.

To better protect themselves from intellectual property theft, industry experts recommends that organizations implement document security strategies more rigorously. By using encryption software and training employees to follow best practices, such as using difficult-to-guess passwords, a company can significantly reduce the likelihood of a loss of trade secrets or other intangible assets.

Data loss is a serious problem for many organizations. According to the recent CDW Data Loss Straw Poll survey of 654 IT professionals, approximately one-fourth of participants' organizations lost data in the last two years. Furthermore, survey respondents identified client, customer and employee personal information as the most likely target of a cyberattack.

Addressing this issue, IDC recently issued a report recommending encryption measures as a means of increasing organizations' document protection and preventing data loss. By using encryption tools, firms can significantly reduce the likelihood of sensitive information being accessed by a cyberthreat. This is particularly important if the files may be transmitted from one network to another, as IDC notes that traveling data is possibly the most at risk of being accessed by unauthorized users.

Additionally, the report argues that encrypting data on an internal network will help protect it from insider threats. If a company relies solely on outward-facing cybersecurity measures, a malicious insider will still be able to access all of the information stored on the firm's network. Encryption ensures that even if an employee decides to turn against his or her organization, the company's data will remain protected.