Continuing to answer some of the questions left outstanding from our recent webinar on the Market IQ on Content Security ( freely downloadable at http://www.aiim.org/article-industrywatch.asp?ID=33810 ). View earlier Q&A postings via the tag aiimQ&A on my blog, as well as Carl's blog (TakingAIIM).
Any further questions or commentary to this, please feel free to comment here on the blog. If you have examples (good, bad, ugly) that apply to the topic, or contrary experiences/opinions, please share them - there is much to be discussed!
Q: In an early slide you mentioned "Content Authentication." What is that again?
A: From the Market IQ on Content Security ( freely downloadable at http://www.aiim.org/article-industrywatch.asp?ID=33810 ), we defined Content Authentication as referring to "the orchestrated usage of many Content Security point technologies (e.g., trusted timestamps, CAS, e-signatures, electronic watermarks and document management) used in aggregate. These technologies are used to provide auditable assurance and reliance that the content is indeed what it represents itself to be (that it is “official,” is the latest version, has had no unauthorized modifications, etc.)."
This application of technology is keenly important if you ever anticipate needing to prove the authenticity of content in court - say in a lawsuit involving patents, and which of two companies created a patentable drug first.
In the pharmaceutical industry, there are millions to potentially billions of dollars of revenue at stake if they cannot prove/defend their claims, and the time limitations of the number of years for which they can hold onto their full rights before competition, generic drug manufacturers, can begin to erode the original creators market share.
Now, one might ask why these are technologies are necessary. Can't we just pull our normal logs of an ECM or Records Management system, to prove the dates/times on which content was created, and show these timelines in a court of law? Courts have become perhaps surprisingly astute about the ease by which digital evidence can be faked/forged to the casual observer.
If you are interested in the ramifications of this, it is advisable to look into the materials produced by Judge Paul W. Grimm, relating to Protocols for the Discovery of Electronically Stored Information (ESI).
Very interesting to note that the definition ESI includes as potentially admissible evidence all of the following:
email and attachments, word processing documents, spreadsheets, graphics and presentation documents, images, text files, hard drives, databases, instant messages, transaction logs, audio and video files, voicemail, Internet data, computer logs, text messages, or backup materials, and Native Files.
Interesting to note that many organizations do not consider audio/video files, and specifically voicemail within their Records Management, or broader, Content Security strategies.
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