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Workshare Press Releases

Press Contacts - Americas/ APAC
David Brennan
Phone: +1 415 901 9028


Press Contacts - EMEA
Hilary Simms
Phone: +44 (0) 207 426 0000

Workshare Australia Urges Caution in Financial Year Flurry

~ risk of information leakage amid ‘save as’ culture ~

Sydney, June 22nd, 2005—Workshare, the leading provider of Document Integrity applications, is urging caution in information sharing and document control in the run up to Financial Year End on June 30, traditionally a time where process and policy can be abandoned in favour of making the numbers.

Workshare, which provides document integrity solutions to more than 80 professional services, corporations, legal firms and government departments in Australia and New Zealand, has warned that companies and organisations rushing to complete tenders, contracts and budgets before June 30 to hit their FY ’05 targets, risk revealing sensitive information or foregoing critical audit and verification controls.

Workshare is urging a ‘secure, accurate, compliant methodology’ be applied whenever a document is created, edited, saved or forwarded:

  • Security: with a ‘save as’ culture prevailing to save time and effort, document metadata may include author details, content changes, information from previous proposals and tenders or even internal confidential financial data
  • Accuracy: manual ’stare and compare’ version control may seriously harm the accuracy of document, as it is often prone to human error.
  • Compliance: ensure there is an audit trail of who emailed, viewed, or made changes to a document
  • Consequently, Workshare, a Microsoft® Gold Certified Partner, has highlighted a number of critical areas to monitor in Microsoft Office® applications:
    • Document properties
    • Document statistics and file dates
    • Custom properties
    • Hidden text
    • Document reviewers
    • Comments
    • Track changes and document revisions
    • Headers and footers
    • Footnotes
    • White text
    • Small text
    • Previous versions
    • Macros
    • Routing slips
    • Fast saves
    • Hidden slides and
    • Hyperlinks

“Diligence should be exercised all year round but we’re urging people not to take their eye off the ball in what is traditionally an intensely stressful, busy time of year as organisations rush to complete tenders, sign contracts and complete financial and legislative reporting, while planning for the new year,” said Andrew Pearson, executive vice president and general manager, APAC, at Workshare.

“This is heightened when staff create ’new’ documents simply by using copy and paste or ‘save as’ to save time. There are ways and means to have the burden of risk mitigation lifted. We’re raising awareness of the risks and encouraging organisations to seek advice and remedy if they’re unsure,” he added.

For more information and advice on data integrity, please visit www.metadatarisk.org.
For information on data integrity solutions, please visit www.workshare.com.

About Workshare
Workshare is the industry leading provider of Document Integrity software applications for professionals. Its products include Workshare Professional, DeltaView, DeltaView PE, Protect and TRACE! Workshare’s customer base spans small to large organizations in every industry segment with more than 50 percent of the Fortune 1000 and 85 percent of the ProServices 250. In total, more than 5,000 companies and over 750,000 professionals in 60 countries use Workshare software. The company has offices in London, New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Frankfurt, The Hague, Hong Kong and Sydney. Workshare is the sponsor of www.metadatarisk.org, the definitive source for content security.