Document Management and Security

Many industry segments have an extreme sensitivity to accuracy and/or security as documents are transferred among internal as well as external destinations. Document content, format, and accuracy of sensitive business information (such as contracts, purchase orders, and customer invoices) cannot be compromised without peril to the businesses affected. Security risks can be heightened significantly when business-critical/sensitive documents are sent through an Internet fax service without proper/appropriate security measures applied throughout the process.

MessageVision has always contended that the best way for its customers to effectively manage and control security of their documents during electronic transfer is to prevent/not subject them to any unnecessary conversion. Our processes are described in the following examples.

Desktop Environments

Industry segments such as insurance, manufacturing, legal, and finance produce a wide variety of documents, which require very careful attention to information security, content, format, and accuracy prior to delivery. When "Office Automation" faxing is introduced as the delivery mechanism, one of two service methods is normally employed to render a document into a faxable image; either service-side rendering or client-side rendering.

Service-Side Rendering

Service-side rendering permits the desktop user to send native-application created documents to the service for delivery to destination fax machines. It normally does not require any additional software on the client PC and will permit the user to submit a limited number of documents created by native applications such as MS Office, Corel, Adobe, and others. Difficulties with document content accuracy is exacerbated in industries that regularly exchange documents between and among different applications like Corel Word Perfect and Microsoft Word or require support for many types of applications. This is because the service actually reads the documents and converts them to a faxable image on servers located at the service site.

The risks involved with service-side rendering are specific to document content sensitivity, security requirements, and format accuracy needs. Document security is at risk because the document is received at the service in native format. It is then read by the native application and converted to a faxable format (TIFF) for transmission, which opens the possibility of unintended manipulation or change to the document at the service point. The increased complexity introduced by the rendering service increases the vulnerability to an unidentified security threat that could be forwarding documents to a third party.

Format and document accuracy are at extreme risk in service-side rendering for similar reasons. As in the previous example, the document is opened and read by the native application at the service point. This requires that the service maintain the correct software version and font set in order for the document to be rendered as it was intended. However, even with the correct application version and the correct fonts, configuration settings for other variables that are inconsistent with the intended document format, could change margins, pagination and/or punctuation. In legal documents this can be critical to meaning and intent, such as contract terms and conditions for purchase orders. In invoices or other financial documents, such errors could omit key prices or totals from the intended page placement.

Document management and control is limited by the office automation solutions document management, control, and archiving capabilities. In industries that require tight controls over the movement, storage and conversions of their documents (integrity of content characteristics prior to, and after, conversion) like the securities, legal, transportation, insurance binding, and accounting industries. These industries generally prefer to use existing in-house document management, control, and archiving solutions. Service-side rendering generally introduces cost, management and security issues that prohibit its use in certain specific situations.

Client-Side Rendering

The most viable alternative to service-side rendering is client-side rendering. This technique allows users to print a document to a file on their local PC and send a faxable image to the fax service. Client-side rendering eliminates the need to send the "native" document to the service to be read and rendered. Since the print/rendering function occurs at the client PC, it is sent to the service in the exact image format that was intended by the user. Once it is rendered into a faxable image, it is unalterable by the service or any other intermediate entity that could potentially attempt to modify the document content. This process all but eliminates the risk of deliberate alteration by the any other entity and ensures that the document contains the intended font, margins, pagination, and punctuation.

Document security risk is absolutely minimized because the document is received at the service in image format. This removes the probability of intentional or accidental manipulation or change to the document at the service point. This also eliminates the complexity introduced by the service-side rendering feature, therefore eliminating the aforementioned potential of an unidentified security threat (forwarding documents to a third party) through service-side rendering.

Document management and control is assured by the client company's document management, control, and archiving solutions. In addition, MessageVision client-side rendering places the document (post rendering) into the client's archive system. Because the document is rendered on the client PC, with integrated archiving, industries that require tight controls over the movement, storage, and conversions of their documents such as the securities, legal, transportation, insurance binding, and accounting industries prefer to use client-side rendering. Client-side rendering provides document management and security features that are generally congruent with both existing and emerging corporate document control and archiving solutions.

Production Environment

The problems regarding document management and control also exist in a production fax environment. Production faxing usually produces invoices, purchase orders, and shipping authorizations, which are also sensitive to security, format, and accuracy. Rendering these documents at the service point would impose all of the risks detailed in the foregoing desktop service-side rendering examples.

Again, the preferred alternative is client-side rendering wherein the production application, through a print driver or other mechanism, produces an image format. One popular format from production systems is PDF. Here again, the user's application has produced an image prior to delivery to the fax service. The fax service then produces a faxable image using Adobe utilities. This process allows the document to be delivered to the destination fax machine in exactly the format that was intended.

Summary

MessageVision contends that the most effective means of providing business enterprises with proper delivery of any type of document, with the requisite security, quality, and accuracy to their intended fax destinations is to through use of client-side rendering techniques. MessageVision provides both client-side and service-side rendering services and maintains that there are applications optimal for both techniques. MessageVision highly recommends that client-side rendering be used any time document security, accuracy, and format integrity is critical for delivery of the document.