As the old adage goes, “Imitation is the highest form of flattery!”  So does this blog post imitate one of my Company’s UK partner’s blog post on the topic of presentation integrity.  Our partner, Eyeful Presentations, posted a very informative article which brings to the world’s attention the importance of assuring integrity of presentations, especially for highly regulated industries such as pharmaceutical and financial.

As the world progresses from one age to another, communication undergoes a major and radical change, improving to the minimum point of acceptable usage in all facets of life.  Generally speaking, one can track these ages in order: The Prehistoric Age; The Stone Age; The Copper Age; The Bronze Age; The Dark Ages; The Middle Ages; The Renaissance; The Imperial Age; The Enlightenment; The Industrial Age; The Atomic Age; The Digital Age; The Age of Globalization; and now, the dawn of The Nano Age.  A major set of technological discoveries preceded the change from one Age to the next, thus establishing the predominance of the new Age.  Communication and its ubiquity serves as common currency of change and its impact to renew the next age.  Let’s talk as the Digital Age and the Age of Globalization as contemporary examples.  Both these ages overlap in our lifetime.  The key to the Digital Age is the ability to represent the real world and its processes and interactions as well as products and services as bits, digital ones and zeros.  The key to the Age of Globalization remains the timely coexistence of very inexpensive telecommunications, a result of the Digital Age, and of commoditized transportation and shipping, i.e., containerization.  What is common between the keys of both these Ages remains the integrity of the information, products, and services transacted between businesses and between businesses and consumers.

Integrity is a funny thing in our digital world.  During the days preceding the Digital Age, businesses shared information with paper.  Mass consumer technology was not that advanced so as to counterfeit or change the integrity of sensitive business documents.  As technology improved, paper moved to tapes, then to disks, then to removable media, then to mobile devices, and now to the “Cloud.”  At the same time, mass consumer technology “caught up” with business technology due to Moore’s Law.  The same technologies used at the office was now available at home.  However, let’s not forget how PCs and networks penetrated the office – employees brought their own technology into the office to improve their productivity (PCs over mainframe terminals) and then connected them together to increase their productivity even further by collaborating on network file shares.  Over the last decade, employees have brought their USB thumb drives, iPods, smartphones, and internet-available storage sites into the office to two primary activities: (a) accomplish their job better and faster at work and at home on their time in order to advance their career, and/or (b) pilfer company documents for advantages of an ulterior motive, whatever that might be.

By leveraging and pushing the boundaries of IT, businesses strive to increase productivity, run their business faster and better while cutting costs.  This Digital Age phenomenon coupled to the Age of Globalization (read outsourcing in this context) pushes technology to improve beyond today’s capabilities.  This is good!  It is leading us into the Nano Age – the ability of our devices to become smaller and smaller, more powerful, and accessible anywhere and everywhere.  However, it has become quite clear the integrity and assurance of sensitive information that passes through the computers at work, at home, offshore, and elsewhere, intentional or not, has not kept pace with the ubiquity and ease of flow of the information its trying to protect.  More and more files are being created to drive business.  More and more businesses are breaking down former barriers to information in order to drive more business, faster and at a lower cost.  The physical world in business has lept to the virtual world, where an office worker has the ability to conduct his or her business anywhere and still be part of the team.  The traditional physical boundaries of the office have transformed into virga that has dissipated into ether we call “The Internet” and now “The Cloud.”  How does the business protect or even just know where its files are and account for their usage, internally or beyond the virtual business boundaries?  Such a transformation to a fully internetworked Digital Age has quietly tucked this growing but hidden crisis under the rug of prosperity and accomplishment.

It is quite easy to conclude that if this crisis continues, we risk collapsing our current Digital Age and Age of Globalization. That is quite alarmist but an inevitable possibility, among others. However, let’s look at the facts, especially with respect to one of this hidden crisis of unassured sensitive information in the Digital Age.  According to the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse data breach database, approximately 356 million sensitive records have been compromised in one or another from January 2005 through June 10, 2010!  That is more than the entire population of the United States of America right now!

Perhaps the files were lost, stolen, misplaced – either intentionally or not.  The question to ask is whether or not a business values sensitive files and whether or not certain ones are breached.  What is the risk tolerance for a business?  Well, it depends upon what type of files.  Are they regulated under law, such as custodial data, or data they have to protect; for example, credit card and personally identifiable information?  Are the files company secrets, such as those files they want to product; for example, budgets, plans, Board presentations, equity model spreadsheets, custom research documents, photographs of some celebrity’s secret wedding in Miami?

Whatever the reason, businesses want to protect their sensitive files for many reasons, two of which are undeniable:  guaranteeing the accuracy of the file and protecting the access of the file or at least knowing who is using it.  I founded InDorse Technologies in order to provide easy-to-use and -to-deploy solutions for businesses that need to account for all their sensitive files no matter where they reside or are used without the need for any additional software.  Now businesses can comply with regulations for sensitive files under their custody and can assure their Board of Directors and customers that secret files are accounted for and protected.  Without ripping out current IT and asking users to do anything different, InDorse file assurance and protection solutions help the march onwards for the expansion of the Digital Age and the Age of Globalization by making sure the communication of sensitive information is safe.