Brainloop: Companies Must Protect Themselves From WikiLeaks-Type Document Leaks


BOSTON, MA--(Marketwire - December 20, 2010) -  Brainloop (www.brainloop.com), the leading supplier of software solutions for high-security management of confidential documents, today announced best practices that can help companies strategically protect their most confidential and sensitive documents from leaking outside the enterprise.

WikiLeaks headlines continue to underscore what happens when confidential documents are freely distributed by unauthorized parties. Unfortunate consequences can occur when companies lose control over confidential information and experience intentional or unintentional disclosure of the information. In some cases, even the possibility of information leakage can damage reputations and stock prices.

Without a document compliance strategy in place to manage document sharing, along with a platform to provide secure, efficient document collaboration, stakeholders will resort to emailing documents or employ an online collaboration tool that was never designed for security and traceability.

This puts information at risk, resulting in premature disclosure of companies' strategic or financial information. Additionally, unsafe document sharing may result in companies' failure to meet their contractual or regulatory obligations due to loss of information entrusted to them by a partner or other stakeholder.

Best Practices to Prevent Document Leaks
For companies to protect themselves they must establish a mechanism where business users can do their jobs without worrisome distraction, automatically applying security policies that will protect information that is being shared with externals. Best practices in document compliance policy mandate an enterprise-wide process to:

  • Define security policies for types of documents
  • Define roles and what privileges each group of users can have
  • Provide a platform that automatically applies these policies

Providing security and compliance with end user demands for efficiency and productivity is a difficult balancing act for corporate IT, so security professionals' goals should include:

  • Empowering end users to perform all the collaborative tasks of their jobs within a secure environment
  • Meeting user needs in a variety of business situations
  • Ensuring that service level agreements support the company's contractual agreements and certification requirements
  • Complying with audit, security and compliance standards, including
    • Strong authentication
    • Separation of content ownership and administration
    • Information-centric security model with persistent document security and rights management
    • Audit trail of all accesses to documents

Says Brainloop CEO Peter Weger, "Ironically, a document paradox exists in that the most confidential documents are often those that require the most sharing. The lifeblood of any business depends on trust and the sharing of information. However the integrity of a business is compromised if its most sensitive documents are stolen or tampered with. Should they become public, like in the case of WikiLeaks, then the business will lose the trust of all its constituents, damaging its reputation and causing the bottom line to suffer. Companies are at risk if they believe their documents are safe by default or by virtue of their not being leaked yet."

About Brainloop
Brainloop, with offices in Boston and Munich, is the leading supplier of software solutions for high-security document collaboration. Brainloop's secure online workspace is a virtual document safe that enables secure filing, editing and distribution of highly confidential documents within a single company, and beyond. All contents are powerfully protected from unauthorized internal or external access, and all actions within the application are documented by a tamper-proof audit trail. Frequent uses include contract negotiations, collecting data and compiling quarterly reports, collaboration with external auditors and counsel, and any other communication that contains confidential information. http://www.brainloop.com

Contact Information:

Press Contact:
Victor Cruz
MediaPR
vcruz@mediapr.net
(401) 349-3369