The free tool from UK-based Workshare runs continuous audits of a user's documents. It claims to identify content that violates federal regulations, corporate policies or personal privacy and to alert users before these violations result in fines, adverse publicity, lost business and lawsuits.
The risks of meta data are known but often neglected. If you send a Microsoft Word document by email, it generally contains a lot of hidden information. Much of this meta data is innocuous: the document title, the date of origin, the file size. But more sensitive information – corrections, comments and deletions – can also get locked into meta data.
Unless this information is actively removed it may reach unintended audiences. The British government made this mistake in 2003 when analysis of the so-called "dodgy dossier" on Iraq, available as a Word document, revealed the names of four civil servants who worked on it. Alastair Campbell, then head of Downing Street communications, had to explain who these people were to the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Select Committee, which was investigating the plagiarising document.
Workshare sells a range of document integrity applications costing from $50–$349 per user but Trace! V2 is a free utility for Microsoft Office users.
Ken Rutsky, executive vice president of worldwide marketing for Workshare, said: "Each year, trillions of document are exchanged electronically. There are serious compliance risks and liabilities over the exposure of personal private data and other sensitive information. Trace! V2 eliminates the risk."
Rutsky says the tool automatically tracks and manages known and hidden content security risks and provide users with a content security solution that dynamically evolves with new regulations.
A spokesman told OUT-LAW that the product is not just for small businesses. "It gets you used to looking behind the document," he said, adding that it also flags-up any meta data that exists in documents received from others. And while the free version does not automatically clean documents, it does give instructions for removing the meta data.