To Avoid Sending Proprietary data outside your office.
Security Tip:
Remove all REVISION MARKS from Word Documents before distribution.
This tip comes from Woody's
Office Tips Word (April 17,2001)
The author recounts the woe that has befallen Alcatel, a DSL
modem company when a Word Document was posted to their web site.
Visibly there was nothing wrong with it. However, if you downloaded
the document and open in Word, then did a
Tools | Track Changes | Changes with Highlighting,
the you would be rewarded with much of the revision history of the
document!
Any document that discusses legal, competitive, safety,
financial matters, or other proprietary information and is not cleaned of
revisions prior to distribution could return to haunt the authors.
Woody also advises that Fast Saves (Tools | Options |
Save Tab | Allow Fast Saves) be turned OFF because that can leave a
"residue" in the file that can be recovered.
Also File | Versions... | is another way to leak
confidential or unintentional data off your desk top.
To remove all Revision marks, go to
Tools | Track Changes | Accept or Reject Changes | Accept
All.
then Tools | Track Changes | (OFF) Track Changes While
Editing.
Finally, save as a new file.
For good measure, open it and check the Track Changes to make
sure nothing remains.
Is all this paranoid? You decide from an
actual case. Woody provided a link to the source: http://morons.org/articles/1/188.
Here is a clip of the kind of information that could show up in a revision mark:
To increase the security of its products, ,
in particular for the more information sensitive Small Office / Home Office
market, Alcatelhad
previouslyalready
implemented additional security measures to avoid direct interference with
its modems by remote users. This Firmware Protection is available in Alcatel
Speed Touchmodems
Home and PRO
modems.
Alcatel ships the modems from its Ffactories
with the Firmware
Protection
enabled, PRO
with Firewall….. It is switched on by default when the modems leave the
Alcatel factories. .
(This paragraph worries me a bit. It could be taken as us favoring a segment
of customers (SOHO). There’s an argument to be had that everyone’s
information is sensitive. Why don’t we provide this level of security to
all of our customers? Why don’t we switch on firewalls by default for all
of our customers?)
