Re: Documentation confidentiality level policy

[Janet Swisher <jmswisher -at- gmail -dot- com>]

The term for information that is covered by an NDA should follow the
terminology that is used in the NDA text. If the NDA uses the term
"confidential" for this material, then that is the term that should
appear on the material to alert readers that that the NDA applies.
"Proprietary" is another term that is sometimes used.

I've only seen three levels in practical use: public, confidential,
and internal. One company I contracted for had another level that was
restricted as to who within the company could see it, but I never
dealt with that level.

If you have customer support forums, you might want to have a
governance category for information from customers that they have
consented to share with other customers. In other words, customers
might want some support questions to be private between them and your
company, but make other questions searchable by other customers (but
not the general public). But that is a completely separate issue than
the categories for your own information.

--Janet


On Wed, Oct 21, 2009 at 9:07 AM, voxwoman <voxwoman -at- gmail -dot- com> wrote:
> I've had my wrist slapped in the past for using the term "Confidential" in a
> non-security-clearance context. People who have worked in government
> settings do not want to see "confidential" or "secret" on documents that
> don't require a security clearance.
>
> After thinking about it, I came up with this list:
>
> Public - anyone
> Member (only) - customers or prospects
> Private - NDA required
> Restricted - employees only (might there be some further restrictions as to
> level of employee who can see certain information?)
>
> -Wendy
>
> On Wed, Oct 21, 2009 at 9:32 AM, Claudine CHAUSSON <
> claudine -dot- chausson -at- jwaretechnologies -dot- com> wrote:
>
>> Hi everyone,
>>
>> I was asked this morning to think about how we can classify documents
>> according to their confidentiality level. I've never worked in a really
>> confidential environment: documents were either for internal use or
>> customer
>> use. I guess this could translate into confidential and public but it
>> doesn't sound that simple.
>>
>> I now work in the electronic banking field (micro chip payment cards) and
>> most information is pretty confidential. So I was thinking about the
>> following levels of confidentiality:
>>        - public: available to anyone who requests the document.
>>        - restricted: to customers or prospects.
>>        - confidential: available to customers only after they have signed a
>> NDA (non disclosure agreement).
>>        - internal: internal use only.
>>
>> What's your opinion on this matter? Do you apply a confidentiality policy
>> on
>> the documents you produce? Could you roughly describe the policy you apply?
>>
>> This is due on Friday so any help from you will be greatly appreciated.
>>
>> Claudine
>>
>>
>> Claudine CHAUSSON
>> Technical writer
>> JWARE Technologies
>>
>> Please consider the environment before printing this email.
>>
>>
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> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>
> Free Software Documentation Project Web Cast: Covers developing Table of
> Contents, Context IDs, and Index, as well as Doc-To-Help
> 2009 tips, tricks, and best practices.
> http://www.doctohelp.com/SuperPages/Webcasts/
>
> Help & Manual 5: The complete help authoring tool for individual
> authors and teams. Professional power, intuitive interface. Write
> once, publish to 8 formats. Multi-user authoring and version control! http://www.helpandmanual.com/
>
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> You are currently subscribed to TECHWR-L as JMSwisher -at- gmail -dot- com -dot- 
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-- 
Visit my blog at: http://www.janetswisher.com
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Free Software Documentation Project Web Cast: Covers developing Table of
Contents, Context IDs, and Index, as well as Doc-To-Help  
2009 tips, tricks, and best practices.
http://www.doctohelp.com/SuperPages/Webcasts/

Help & Manual 5: The complete help authoring tool for individual
authors and teams. Professional power, intuitive interface. Write
once, publish to 8 formats. Multi-user authoring and version control! http://www.helpandmanual.com/

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