Smooth operator with answers in murky world

Jul 25 2007 by Bill Gleeson, Liverpool Daily Post

Bill Gleeson talks to CATHY BRODE, chief executive officer for 3BView

CATHY BRODE deals in the murky world of metadata. Not many people know it is out there, but it is and it can catch out the unwary.

Metadata can be found embedded in every electronic document. It tells those that know how to access it a lot of facts and figures about word-processed documents, spreadsheets, pdf files, databases and other types of document. This can include sensitive information such as the name of the original author.

It was metadata that gave away the fact that a large part of the government’s dossier justifying war in Iraq was cribbed from a PhD student’s thesis.

Metadata can be found very easily. It can be accessed in a word document by using the file and properties from the menu. This reveals a panel that includes facts such as who authored the document, which company it came from, whether it used a template and figures such as how many times it has been revised and how long users have spent editing it.

Another potential pitfall for the unwary is the ability of a document’s recipient to track changes made to it. Opening a document in Wordpad will show deletions. Worse still, is a common problem afflicting law firms. Law firms often use the track changes option when creating a word document to see at a glance which member of a team made what amendment to contract, letter, witness statement or other evidence. If the lawyers forget to undo track changes before forwarding to the other side in a dispute or negotiation, they could find vital information is given away.

“It’s the constant frustration of IT departments in law firms,” says Brode.

“They are full of very bright legal minds who don’t understand IT. All the lawyers want to do is use the basic functions of Word and Outlook Explorer.”

As a result, the metadata and the tracked changes are sent out by email for the consumption of anybody who knows where to look.

It was through the use of track changes that Merck was found to have deleted a table that suggested a link between its arthritis drug Vioxx and heart attacks.

Brode, however, has the answer in the form of a software package that strips out the embarrassing details.

The programme, known as 3BClean, has been developed by her St Helens-based software company 3BView.

“We call it information leak prevention,” explains Brode.

“We could, for example, use our programme to stop a salesman sending out a list of leads to competitors just before he leaves the company.”

She cites a personal example of how she used metadata to her advantage when negotiating her employment terms and conditions with a prospective new employer. The employer sent out a standard contract that had been tweaked to include Brode’s details. She was to use track changes to discover that others had been offered better terms.

“The next time you get a document from a lawyer have a look in properties field and you may discover whether it has used another law firm’s template. That happens quite a lot.”

Another handy place to look is in the statistics field of the properties panel to see if the time spent editing the document bears any relation to the time charged in your lawyer’s invoice.

“Law firms are our biggest market,” she quips wryly.

“Nor is transferring a word file to a pdf file a guaranteed mechanism for removing metadata. A pdf opened as a text only document can reveal changes.”

3BView’s product overcomes the lawyers’ lack of care by sitting on the firm’s server.

“Being server-based allows us to automate the process. As a document passes through a server, our programme strips out the metadata,” says Brode.

3BView was set up two years ago by Brode and her business partner Martin Brown.

The pair had met at another company called CDC which Brode part-owned that assisted with managing huge data files for publication, such as pharmaceutical research. She sold CDC a few years ago. A computer systems graduate from the University of Cardiff, Brode’s first job was in the early stages of the development of broadband at what was then called Plessey.

3BView is currently going through a fundraising exercise for £750,000 to come from a range of investors including Merseyside Special Investment Fund.

The programme costs £5,000 for a perpetual licence.

As well as the legal sector, other potential markets include the financial services industry. “People need to be careful there. Financial services is very highly regulated,” warns Brode.

“Our problem has been to know which market to tackle first. The problem is well understood in the legal industry, but it is becoming increasingly better understood generally.

“People have understood risks like spam and viruses from inbound electronic documents and people are beginning to better understand the need to take similar precautions about outbound electronic documents. People are increasingly aware they should be checking what goes out to stop all metadata risks.”

Brode also points to a growing risk from e-discovery. In a legal dispute, the two sides are allowed to take a look at each other’s documents. These days this includes electronic files.

“So companies are going to have to develop policies about what can be sent out in emails and what can’t and what metadata they want to store and what should be deleted,” predicts Brode.

As for the future, Brode’s focus in entirely on 3BClean. “We have a lot to do yet with this one. It’s very exciting times for us. I want to build this company and then I will probably set out to do the same all over again,” she said.

billgleeson@dailypost.co.uk