Protection of electronic documents
and other digital content

against unauthorized viewing and illegal distribution

Why do we need to protect documents?

Nowadays, the most important information is created, stored, and transferred in the form of electronic documents. They could be corporate materials which contain a commercial secret or company’s intellectual property. Or it could be that documents themselves are the objects of monetization and need to be protected by copyright. In this case, violation of the copyright directly leads to losses for the creators and publishers.

Misplacement, leaking, or intended theft of confidential documents may lead to financial losses, reputation risks, losing of a competitive advantage, dismissal of responsible staff members, or even total elimination of a company.

It is of utmost importance to arrange reliable protection of electronic documents in order to avoid leaking of confidential information and to protect intellectual property from illegal distribution.

In this article, we will talk about how you can protect your documents.

Which documents require protection?

	Corporate documents which contain confidential information: orders from chief executives, decisions made by directors boards, corporate reports, technical and project design documentation, drafts, schemes, research and development papers, specification registers, databases, closed price lists, and any other documents which are meant strictly for internal use.
	Documents as commercial products to sell: e-books, analytical reports, marketing research, tutorials, video courses, study guides, reference textbooks, etc.
	Personal documents: photographs, portfolios, sketches, projects, scientific papers that are sent via the Internet, stored in cloud services, etc.

Why do we lose information?

According to data gathered by InfoWatch, over 2/3 of confidential data leaks in 2020 happened due to actions of employers, both intentional and accidental. In 2019, 52% of data leaks were intentional, and in 2020 the number got to 80%, while the number of leaks that occur through contractors increased by two.

Graph 1. Leak distribution in terms of direction of violation in Russia, 2020

Most incidents were registered among the so-called "non-privileged" staff, i.e., regular employers, who normally should not even have access to confidential information, or have limited access to it.

Graph 2. Leak distribution in terms of source of violation in Russia, 2020

How can you protect corporate information?

We have developed StarForce Content Enterprise On-Premises for our corporate clients who need to deploy the solution on their own territory. StarForce Content Enterprise On-Premises is mostly used by large and medium-sized companies who want control over classified documents within the organization, digital document flow, and a safe way to send information to remote readers.

StarForce Content Enterprise On-Premises facilitates integration with external DLP, SIEM, and electrnic document flow systems.

StarForce Content Enterprise On-Premises can work both with an open network and with a closed network without online access.

Besides document protection, the system has an optional module for leak investigation. This module allows investigating leaks caused by attackers who photograph the device with an opened document.

For investigation of such cases, StarForce Content Enterprise On-Premises has a steganoigraphy module, which facilitates detecting leaks through slightly shifting some text blocks, which is invisible for readers. Thus you can find out the number for the instance of access to the document and the device, on which the document was opened at the time it was leaked. This helps to determine who was responsible for the leak.

How can you protect commercial content?

We have designed StarForce Content SaaS for secure protection of e-books, video courses, marketing research papers, audit reports, and other commercial materials. This solution is mostly used by large and medium-sized companies that need to protect their intellectual property from illegal distribution without spending money on the infrastructure. With StarForce Content SaaS, you only pay for content protection and management service.

The difference between StarForce Content Enterprise SaaS and StarForce Content Enterprise On-Premises is that with StarForce Content Enterprise SaaS the basic components of the system are located on the server hosted by Protection Technology, LLC in a data storage and processing center located in RF in accordance with Federal Law No.242-FZ of July 21, 2014.

We can protect the following formats:

We support the following operating systems:

The method for handling and storing documents which is implemented in StarForce Content Enterprise corresponds with the Regulation No. 1233 of November 3, 1994,of the Government of the Russian Federation On Approval of the Statute on Procedures for Handling Classified Information in Federal Executive Authorities.

StarForce Content Enterprise is included in the Unified Register of Russian software. Record No.5146 of February 26, 2019, was made based on the Order No.63 of February 22, 2019, of the Ministry of Digital Development, Communications and Mass Media of the Russian Federation.

Principal parameters of the system meet the requirements for automated systems and protection against unauthorized access to information of the FSTEC (Federal Service for Technical and Export Control) of the Russian Federation.