Transferring legal and confidential files?

[Geoff Hart <ghart -at- videotron -dot- ca>]

James Jones wondered: <<I do technical communication and translation  
things for clients from my home office. Sometimes a client will be an  
attorney who needs translations of stuff, and sometimes that stuff  
will be of a confidential nature, What say you with regard to keeping  
confidential stuff confidential on the Internet?>>

One obvious option is to think laterally: put the stuff on a CD and  
ship the CD Fedex. Of course, sometimes shit happens even with the  
best couriers; I recall losing a batch of color slides I'd couriered  
to the printer when the slide box tore a hole in the envelope. The  
slides were found and returned because (paranoid that I am <g>) I'd  
labeled the box. But if they'd been valuable and confidential...  
trouble.

So the larger issue is not so much how to transfer the information as  
much as it is one of encryption: your real goal is to protect the  
information if it's intercepted in transit, not to mention if someone  
steals your computer. (You'll also need to determine what your backup  
needs are: they must be secure against data loss and secure against  
theft.) Your clients should be able to tell you what they consider  
acceptable levels of security, and that's the first thing you need to  
find out. Then get it in writing, with appropriate legal weasel words  
to cover you against things that aren't your fault or that aren't  
explicitly stated in the agreement.

There are a range of utilities out there for protecting Acrobat and  
other files, but Google on the file type plus the words "password  
cracker" and you'll discover that this is only the most casual form  
of security. Zip files (PC) and Stuffit files (Mac) can be password  
protected, but with the same caveats--low tech, and low security, but  
good enough for some purposes.

The usual one-size-fits-all solution that offers ostensibly  
unbeatable security is some form of public-key encryption. The two  
groups I recall reading about a few years back were PGP ("pretty good  
privacy"; www.pgp.com) and RSA (www.rsasecurity.com). No personal  
experience with either, but perhaps other list members can provide  
the necessary details. But the problem with all such approaches is  
that the weakness lies in the human behind the encryption, not the  
encryption itself; if someone steals your private key, you might as  
well not have bothered.

----------------------------------------------------
-- Geoff Hart
ghart -at- videotron -dot- ca / geoffhart -at- mac -dot- com
www.geoff-hart.com
----------------------------------------------------


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