The findings come courtesy a new investigation via The British Medical Journal (BMJ).

What Is Document Security? Document security is the procedures and storage protocols set up to protect either a physical or digital document which includes how it will be stored, shared, and discarded. This security is important so the owner can control who has access. Document security seeks to protect documents and comply with regulatory requirements for privacy and safety. It involves a file management process to restrict access, especially to sensitive or private content. File security entails managing these files securely however they are stored, processed, or transmitted to mitigate security threats. Why Is Document Security Important? Documents face a myriad of threats from many malicious actors. Thieves, cybercriminals, and organized crime syndicates want to steal identification details to gain access to financial gateways like bank account logins and credit card information. Confidential data provided to businesses by their customers and employees needs to be kept under tight privacy protocols. Businesses risk lawsuits and reputational damage if this information is compromised. Intellectual property is a competitive advantage on which the prosperity of companies and nations depends in an increasingly global marketplace. Therefore, organizations don’t want their business secrets and intellectual property to fall into the hands of competitors through espionage. All this valuable and sensitive information is invariably stored in digital documents. Document security seeks to prevent these incidents by protecting files from unauthorized access and reducing the risk of data loss, leakage, and exposure. Types of Document Security Different documents require different levels of protection. Overall, the type of security documents require are the five pillars of information assurance: Confidentiality: Confidentiality means the information in the file remains private. The secrecy required to shield the file’s content from those who aren’t authorized to view it is enforced with encryption. Integrity: Integrity ensures a file hasn’t been inadvertently or intentionally modified, whether at rest or during transmission. Hash functions use a hash value to verify the integrity of the data within the document. Availability: Adequate security measures ensure documents are available to authorized users when needed. This means that threats, like denial-of-service attacks, have to be thwarted to ensure documents on websites are available to those who need to access them. Authentication: Authentication compels those who attempt to access documents to prove that they are who they say they are. This requires robust identity management. Most organizations now implement multi-factor authentication to strengthen authentication. Nonrepudiation: This ensures that the parties involved in a transaction cannot deny their participation. Hence, a security system should be able to prove that someone sent, viewed, or modified a file. Nonrepudiation is achieved through digital signatures, logging, and audit trails. Components of Document Security A document protection system contains several components that facilitate its mission to protect documents. Some of these help to restrict access to only authorized users, while other components control permissions on who can modify a file. Here are the security components typically used in these security systems: Encryption and license controls: Encryption uses cryptographic algorithms and keys to scramble or encrypt a file’s content so that it becomes unreadable. Hence, only valid users and recipients, who possess the correct cryptographic key, can decrypt and view the file’s contents. Document rights management: DRM is a perimeter-based security model that seeks to protect documents and content from copyright infringements and intellectual property violations. Its objective is to restrict the access of digital content to only those who have assumed rightful ownership, typically through purchase or authorship. Document tracking: For a document to be truly protected, both within and outside the corporate perimeter, a business needs to have full visibility into its movement and chain of custody. One of the ways this visibility is achieved is through tracking the document to know who has accessed and viewed it and for how long these transactions have occurred. Password protection: From a user access perspective, enabling password protection is the first step in document protection. It is the first security barrier to prevent unauthorized access to files. Moreover, it is relatively simple to implement, although not entirely foolproof. Document expiry, restriction of access, and self-destruction: Limiting access to documents based on time duration and permissions provides immense advantages for security. Watermarking: Watermarking has several applications beyond the use as a trademarking device. One of its basic functions is to clearly communicate the document’s classification. Hence, it leaves the recipients with little doubt as to how the document should be treated. A document marked with a “confidential” watermark signals a certain degree of secrecy. Information rights management: Information rights management is a subset of DRM and it focuses on zero-trust security for collaborative files. Information Rights Management security travels with the document wherever it goes, equipped with identity access management techniques to ensure user permissions are enforced. Implementing Document Security at Each Stage of the Document Life Cycle There are several phases involved in document protection. At each stage of a file’s life cycle, organizations face the danger of the document being stolen, lost, or compromised. Therefore, businesses need to have full visibility into how their documents are produced, processed, stored, and consumed—i.e., throughout the entire document life cycle: 1. The Capture Phase This is the equivalent of the “onboarding” of information to produce the document. This phase encompasses creating and saving files in an application. Activities at this stage also include scanning to transfer hard copy documents to electronic format. 2. The Storage Phase Electronic-based document storage provides a lot of opportunities for centralized record management and better oversight. For instance, storage in database systems provides the capacity for search capabilities and normalization to reduce redundancy. 3. The Management Phase One of the most important things for file protection, especially in a distributed system is adequate management. Management helps to provide supervision and control over the document protection system. What facilitates security during this phase are user roles, permissions, version control, and audit trails. These elements have a way of reinforcing one another to provide all-around document protection management. Ultimately, without this phase of a document security system, elements like user permissions will be difficult to enforce. 4. The Preserve Phase Document preservation requires monitoring and maintenance of the digital repositories where they are stored. In most cases, file retention is required by law. And in some instances, documents are legally required to be preserved for a couple of years. 5. The Delivery Phase The delivery phase emphasizes sharing and collaboration. The delivery phase is important when it’s necessary to share information between contractors, allies, and other business partners. 6. The Integration Phase In the current digital economy, it’s imperative for applications and documents to be able to “play well” and collaborate with others. This is because there’s a certain specialization of roles and division of labor since a single application can’t supply all the expertise needed to support user aspirations. This is why there’s a proliferation of application program interfaces in software to facilitate integration between applications. Likewise, the integration phase allows files to communicate and exchange information with other applications. Document Security Measures That Every Business Needs Remote work and "bring your own device" have increasingly become part of the fabric of the modern workforce. Along with these paradigm shifts come more security risks because of an organization’s increased surface of attack exposure, thereby making their documents more vulnerable. Here are some of the security measures organizations can implement to address the challenge of workforce mobility: 1. Intrusion Detection Systems Malicious actors are using more sophisticated attack vectors that can operate in stealth mode. Most businesses don’t have a clue they have been breached, sometimes even months after the fact. Therefore, an added layer of document protection is justified by investing in an intrusion detection system to monitor your network. These systems alert you to suspicious behavior that is indicative of a system breach.

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