Metadata is Lurking in Your Documents

Metadata is Lurking in Your Documents – August 2008

The electronic documents you send to others contain a lot of information other than what you see when you print the document.  For example, a Microsoft Office document such as Word, Excel and PowerPoint may contain the author of the file (from the operating system), the creation date, the amount of time spent editing, how many times the document has been printed and how many revisions have been made.  One troubling piece of information retained is deleted text, which is kept in case you want to use the undelete command.  The term used to classify this additional information is metadata.

Metadata risk is the threat that an unintended and detrimental outcome may result from someone viewing metadata.  Attorneys are one group that are very susceptible to liability.  The implications of having the recipient of your document know how much time was spent drafting a document or who drafted the document is undesirable.  The ability of someone to see the deleted text and previous revisions of a document is scary.

Attorneys are by no means the only group that should be aware of metadata risk.  Sending a potential client a quote for products or services and giving that person the ability to see the price changes you made before sending the document may sound absurd, but could be a reality because of metadata.

The way to manage metadata risk is to use software to “clean” the metadata from your documents before they are sent out.  A product that is designed specifically for this purpose is iScrub from Esquire Innovations, Inc.

iScrub works with Outlook, Lotus Notes and Groupwise to automatically prompt the user to clean the metadata from files sent as email attachments.  Attached Word, Excel and PowerPoint files can also be locked to prevent the sent document from being edited or copied and only giving the recipient of the document the ability to view it.  This feature is a PDF alternative that keeps the document in its native Microsoft format.  iScrub also includes a utility called “SpinCycle” that allows the user to select and clean multiple Microsoft Office and PDF files or entire directories at one time.  Also included is a metadata viewer that gives a user the ability to assess the metadata risk associated with a document.

One of the best characteristics of iScrub is its scalability.  The ability to centrally administer this product makes it a great choice for large organizations.  The administrator can define up to five types of scrubs.  For convenience some basic scrub levels are already defined. For example, a scrub level called “Adversary” is predefined to remove all metadata while a level called “Cooperator” will remove metadata related to comments and hidden text, but leave tracked changes intact.  The metadata scrubbed by these predefined level can be changed.  This product is so easy to use that it is also a great choice for a one man shop.  Pricing is determined by the number of licenses purchased with a single license only costing about $100.

Other products sold by Esquire Innovations include:

iCreate – document production, creation and template tool for Microsoft Office

iRedline –  redlining tool for comparing Microsoft Word documents and Excel workbooks and worksheets

iDocID – an “Universal Document Identifier” for Microsoft Word, Excel and Document Management Systems

iOffice System 5.0 – incudes iCreate, iRedline, iDocID and iScrub

Esquire Innovations specializes in productivity and management tools for the Microsoft Office line of products.  Their primary focus has been the document-intense environment of law firms, however; we believe these products could give a huge productivity boost to any heavy user of Microsoft Word, Excel or PowerPoint.  iScrub could greatly benefit anyone that sends Microsoft documents to others.  Metadata risk is certainly not limited to attorneys.  Using this product is as essential as Anti-virus and Anti-spyware software.  Make sure you are protected!