RE: Documentation security?

["Swallow, William" <WSwallow -at- courion -dot- com>]

John wrote:

     "I think the second part of this issue is 
     how do you protect the contents after the 
     dpocument has been acccessed? We'd all like 
     to think that every usr is going to treat 
     the material with the confidentiality it 
     deserves...however, what is to stop someone 
     from pasing a copy to someone else if they 
     want?
     "You need a mechanism to track each document 
     (or at least make the user believe it is being
     tracked) so that the person knows that if they 
     do, wherever it ends up, you know how it got 
     there and that you can pursue legal avenues."

We also need a mechanism to stop world hunger and bring forth world peace.
*g*

Sorry to trivialize this, but there are only so many hoops you can jump
through before the means begin to fail to justify the ends. As Sean pointed
out, the info this person is intending to secure is hardly proprietary.
Sure, it sucks that someone might swipe it and reuse it, but those are the
breaks with any information out there these days. Did you make sure to
properly secure your copies of your grade-perfect Moby Dick report from High
School so future students couldn't find it and put their name on it to get
out of writing a paper for themselves? (Yes, this did happen to me, several
times.)

If the information is truly sensitive - like top secret operations manuals
or Area 51 design specifications - then you indeed want to secure that
information as tightly as possible. But, in the case of an attractive web
hosting guide, you should provide whatever level of security you can within
the time and budget constraints you have to work with. Someone may steal
your work. It sucks, I know, but if you made an effort to make the
documentation accessible via secure login and provided copyright info as
needed, I think you provided a decent means of protecting your work. You
could always set up a secure connection using content encryption that only
your server can decode if the proper authentication keys exist on the client
machines, but I think you're killing a very small bird with a bombardment of
very expensive boulders.

Just my thoughts.

***************** 
BILL SWALLOW 
Technical Writer 
C O U R I O N   C O R P O R A T I O N 
1881 Worcester Road 
Framingham, Mass.  01701 
T E L * 508-879-8400 x316 
F A X * 508-879-8500 
www.courion.com 
***************** 


-----Original Message-----
From: John Posada [mailto:jposada01 -at- yahoo -dot- com]
Sent: Tuesday, July 17, 2001 11:10 AM
To: Swallow, William; TECHWR-L
Subject: RE: Documentation security?


...
> A very basic question that may give you your answer:
> Do your users have to log in to your servers to use your
> product/services?
> If so, why not supply the documentation within this secure
> framework? If not, why not have the documentation available 
> via password over the web?


=====
John Posada, Senior Technical Writer
"I am a bomb disposal expert. If you see me running, try to keep up."
mailto:john -at- tdandw -dot- com, 732-259-2874

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Get personalized email addresses from Yahoo! Mail
http://personal.mail.yahoo.com/

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

*** Deva(tm) Tools for Dreamweaver and Deva(tm) Search ***
Build Contents, Indexes, and Search for Web Sites and Help Systems
Available now at http://www.devahelp.com or info -at- devahelp -dot- com

TECH*COMM 2001 Conference, July 15-18 in Washington, DC
The Help Technology Conference, August 21-24 in Boston, MA
Details and online registration at http://www.SolutionsEvents.com


---
You are currently subscribed to techwr-l as: archive -at- raycomm -dot- com
To unsubscribe send a blank email to leave-techwr-l-obscured -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com
Send administrative questions to ejray -at- raycomm -dot- com -dot-  Visit 
http://www.raycomm.com/techwhirl/ for more resources and info.