24 August 2004
Metadata Exposed
Did you know that a typical Word document contains twenty-five different types of hidden metadata? A new website called Metadatarisk.org aims to take the confusion out of these digital “fingerprints” that attach to a Word document each time it is saved.
The site offers, among other things, a downloadable application to search documents for metadata and an online tool that will check your website for documents containing metadata. The site also contains information on why metadata is important from a Sarbanes-Oxley compliance perspective and gives a list of security best practices related to metadata.
Other sites, such as Strike That Out, Sam, offer similar tools, but Metadatarisk.com seems to be the best resource currently available.
