Comments on: Orbious Will Make Forwarding Confidential Documents Dangerous

By: kelly

kelly — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 11:17:13 +0000

The Power of Asset Readiness
Not convinced yet? Here are three more points to consider:
1.Companies that are asset ready through the use of http://www.data...at-is-a-vdr.htm VDR technology are able to take quicker advantage of any opportunity that arises, including those unlikely times when a suitor shows up at the door unannounced.
2.They are also able to use their repository when seeking to recruit and hire new executives, or to bring technical advisors and consultants up to speed on business matters.
3.The on-going expense of maintaining a DataSite is less than the expense of one paper-based due diligence exercise conducted as a fire drill…yet provides the executive team with ready access and availability 24/7.
The fast and efficient presentation of due diligence information via http://www.data...ut-datasite.htm VDR technology (as compared with poorly executed, last minute document grabs) gives potential investors and business partners greater confidence that they are dealing with a highly efficient organization. Having received a full and complete picture, they are more likely to conclude that their evaluation is bankable.

By: kiana

kiana — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 21:34:08 +0000

its a great website

By: Jo

Jo — Sat, 13 Sep 2008 13:01:55 +0000

Please could someone clarify? If you send an email to a company do they have the legal right to send it outside the company?

By: Daniel

Daniel — Thu, 09 Aug 2007 01:19:52 +0000

I couldn’t understand some parts of this article o.us poetry, but I guess I just need to check some more resources regarding this, because it sounds interesting.

By: The Compost

The Compost — Wed, 08 Aug 2007 15:00:04 +0000

company: Orbious…

A unique and innovative approach to document tracking – very interesting concept by Orbious More info at TechCrunch: Orbious Will Make Forwarding Confidential Documents Dangerous…

By: Oliver

Oliver — Tue, 07 Aug 2007 07:52:40 +0000

I’d like to second Jack Studer’s remarks. Using a hosted service (e.g., shameless self-promotion, http://www.brainloop.com) you can create a closed-loop environment that connects all authorized users and applies persistent protection capabilities to keep information under control at all times, at rest, in transit, and when it’s on users’ desktops. Regardless of whether those users in your company or your external auditors or management consultants.

As an additional benefit of the closed-loop architecture you will get an exhaustive audit trail documenting who saw which document version at what time, which is exactly what you need when things go wrong and forensic investigation has to zero in on the leaks.

By: kmilec

kmilec — Tue, 07 Aug 2007 03:18:42 +0000

Darn. I thought this would be something else. ISO standards delivered by some standards retailers as PDFs have each page individually serial numbered with a microprint number and barcode. Now, if there were a way to get a hash out of a PDF markup and serialize it, then store that data at a depository (in other words, the content isn’t transmitted, just a unique ID for the page); it would be darn near legally binding.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Tue, 07 Aug 2007 01:12:36 +0000

The doc tracker seems to be a very interesting idea, with a potential to benefit government and economic sectors.

With respect to Jack’s comment, I am of the belief that if the doc tracker system was in place the number of leaked documents would be reduced because the leak would be traceable. Most people are not going to risk their reputation and possibly their careers if they know that their actions can be traced.

Obviously, if someone knows that their is a good chance that they are going to be identified and held accountable for their actions, they are going to think twice about leaking confidential documents in the first place.

By: Jack Studer

Jack Studer — Tue, 07 Aug 2007 00:03:06 +0000

Wouldn’t it be easier to just use a secure 3rd party hosting site like draftspace.com (admittedly shameless self plug)? I know some of our clients (funds of various sorts) use our secure data site services to report to their LPs about returns and other confidential materials that they dont want being forwarded around, and we offer for them to also use the same secure platform to have their portfolio companies report to them.

The biggest concern with confidentiality isn’t being able to prosecute who broke confidence and leaked the document, its about preventing the leak in the first place. Orbious doesn’t seem to provide any real protection against that, just a cute way to catch the offender after the fact.

Ask yahoo whether they care who leaked their original facebook presentation. Maybe, but i’m sure they’d much rather it have never happened in the first place.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 21:28:06 +0000

This has been done in politics and government for ages. Surprised it’s taken so long to become “software-ized”…

By: Chad Robinson

Chad Robinson — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 19:14:16 +0000

This is a really old idea. Tom Clancy discussed it in 1988 in Patriot Games, and it wasn’t a new idea then. This is an interesting concept, but I think the flaws mentioned above reduce its usefulness – somebody would have to paste one of the sentences that was reworded, they’d have to paste it exactly, and the editing is non-trivial for juicy bits that are most likely to be pasted. It’s hard to reword “Q62007 EBITDA: $14.4M”.

I wonder: have they done a patent search on the concept? It would be interesting to know if they violate any.

It wouldn’t surprise me to see good uptake of this service as marketing folks look for solutions. It also wouldn’t surprise me to see some egg-on-face oopses, a-la ‘confidential’ data being leaked because somebody thought blacking it out in a DOC actually hid the information.

By: Yusuf Motiwala

Yusuf Motiwala — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 15:17:55 +0000

Interesting! However, changing text could be risky especially with legal and contractual documents.

Also, it is possible for a user to use same or similar software to make another unique version of the document before forwarding so that he or she can not be tracked.

By: Steve Poland

Steve Poland — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 14:38:27 +0000

Wrote this out as an idea 6 months ago — could have been any of you http://www.tech...-employee-leak/

By: stewart mercer

stewart mercer — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 10:59:18 +0000

I think the key point here is ‘from a trusted source’ – why wouldn’t the trusted source just say ’skype me for some great gossip about ‘ ?

Personally, I wouldn’t trust *anyone* who forwarded on confidential legal documents – would you want them to forward on *yours* ?

All opinions expressed are my own, etc, etc.

By: Venture Itch

Venture Itch — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 06:55:46 +0000

Canary trap…

A canary trap or barium meal (terminology of Cold War espionage thrillers) is a method for tracking an information leak by disseminating different versions of sensitive document to each of suspects and watching which version gets surfaced. The term was…

By: Disgusted by greed

Disgusted by greed — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 06:48:56 +0000

One of the things that makes me very happy: receiving a confidential document in my email from a trusted source. It could be a merger agreement. Or an internal executive-only email memo. Or a powerpoint pitch for a new product.

You know what, Mike? This attitude makes me very SAD. You are…

1) Stiffling internal communications.
Even when executives want to be frank and open with the people they lead, it’s people like you that force them to be less-so.

2) Causing potential significant damage to companies’ bottom lines (and, by this, harming their employees)
By spilling the beans on mergers or new products, there’s a very real chance that you could be scuttling them, making them harder to pull off, and basically causing a lot of people a lot of pain.

Is being First worth it? Does inciting people to violate their contracts, make their colleagues uncomfortable, and deal with extra stress really make you happy? Does it make the world a better place? Or does it make you basically akin to Valleywag — anything for a headline and a buck?

Basically, you are encouraging people to violate their colleagues’ trust. Orbious may not be a great service, but you know what? It’s because of people like you that companies feel compelled to try this sort of thing and treat their employees like criminals and liars. Sure, if it weren’t TechCrunch, it’d be another site that malcontents might leak to. But that doesn’t give you clean hands. It’d be like saying, hey, if I don’t buy this stolen property, someone else will! I’m not the one who stole it!

Yeah. Just great.

How about reporting on stuff that’s public? Surely you can offer some insightful commentary, fact-checking, etc? Must you depend upon deceit?

By: Alex

Alex — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 05:41:25 +0000

I agree with Mike. This software’s popularity could take off very quickly.

If this company wanted to get some immediate sales traction they should contact every single Private Equity Firm and sell them the software. As recent history has shown there an incredible amount of insider trading happening on Wall Street.

….. btw – it looks like the Bush Administration may have been a beta customer. Nothing that comes out of the oval office has a consistent theme:)

By: anon

anon — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 05:17:19 +0000

Microsoft has already solved this problem – http://www.microsoft.com/rms

By: anon

anon — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 05:10:45 +0000

steganography doesn’t work when you print the document, orbious’s technique sounds like it will work when you print the document.

By: Seth Finkelstein

Seth Finkelstein — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 04:36:30 +0000

This sort of technique has long been done with certain high-level documents, usually leaked by officials to journalists – it’s called “salting”. The typical way of dealing with it is to paraphrase the document and destroy the original.

Generally, if people are leaking, finding out who did it requires getting the original from the leakee, and they sure have an incentive not to help.

Some especially Machiavellian leakers have supposed exchanged their salted (paper) document with a rival’s, and then leaked the rival’s document! (or at least that’s a good story).

By: Vijay Chakravarthy

Vijay Chakravarthy — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 04:26:20 +0000

@gilltots, thats basically what steganography is — hiding information in other information while keeping the perception of it the same. My point was that its easiest to do in images (if a couple of pixels is off by one shade of red, no one would be able to notice). It can also be done, as you suggested, by other seemingly innocuous modifications at the text level.

Orbiously, the thesaurus level stuff seems a little excessive to me.

By: David Mackey

David Mackey — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 04:11:30 +0000

Modifications seem a little rough.

By: David Klenowski

David Klenowski — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 04:10:18 +0000

Hi techcrunch

As an avid techcrunch reader, just wanted to say thanks Michael for the blurb.

For the readers (with valid criticisms) you can see my rebuttal comments at
http://www.orbi...us.com/faq.html

cheers
dave

By: gilltots

gilltots — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 03:57:49 +0000

i think this idea is pretty decent, but i wouldn’t rely on a thesaurus to do the tweaking. why not Capitalize random letteRs throughout the dOcument? or change the whitespace or punctuation in a slight but non-meaning-changing way? double space between some words or something…or even make the
lines wrap after a different column length.

there’s lots of ways to change the medium but maintain the message, thesaurus seems like one of the most complicated and easiest to spot.

By: Tim

Tim — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 03:18:35 +0000

For all those so concerned about the wording issue, I checked their website and apparently you have the option to authorize each wording change yourself. If you only make one wording change in the document that could be easy and effective.

Everyone here thinks they could avoid this issue, but you will probably not know they are using it until they bust you.

I am sure George Bush is one of their beta testers. I bet he is busily trying to figure out who in his cabinet is sabotaging his Presidency.

I wonder if Orbious can help him figure it out that it is himself?