Today, I am excited to announce the public availability of SecureView, the most secure way to share information. Now, anyone can securely and easily share information with others.
Over 90% of the world’s organizations are completely unprepared for the risks imposed by insiders. Until now it’s been impossible to both safeguard information and enable intentional communications and collaboration.
The basic communications inside an organization and with external partners represent the lifeblood of modern business. Every day insiders share an organization’s most valuable assets - including proprietary business plans, customer information, intellectual property, and more. While the decision to share this information is usually made with the best intentions (and because other people also need this information to do their best work), it is not without risk. A lot of it.
Fundamental communications around internal information are often the hardest to secure. Send a document attachment and now it’s beyond your control, able to be forwarded anywhere. Send an all-staff email and now there’s safety in numbers for someone who wants to leak it. Share a PDF of a product roadmap and anyone can take a photo of the doc to show others.
Theft or leakage of internal information can become an “extinction event” for an organization, eroding brand value, and damaging leadership effectiveness and trust, team morale, and other negative ripple effects.
Pioneering a new solution
To combat these problems, EchoMark developed an entirely new approach to protecting information called SecureView, which provides unmatched information security that doesn’t get in the way of communicating. SecureView is now available for anyone to try out for free at EchoMark.com.
A key design principle for SecureView is to satisfy that fundamental need for the seamless flow of information to maintain the lifeblood of the organization while still keeping private information private. SecureView works by creatively leveraging human psychology, Artificial Intelligence (AI), computer vision, and workflow integrations to make information security both effective AND easy.
SecureView is entirely complementary to existing information security technologies such as Data Loss Prevention (DLP) or Digital Rights Management (DRM). It provides additional unique protections to help prevent leaks or theft. SecureView, deployed together with existing DLP and DRM solutions such as Microsoft Purview, collectively provides the most comprehensive information security available.
SecureView brings together three powerful innovative capabilities into a universally compatible browser-based reader (no special client software required) to dramatically reduce the chances of unauthorized disclosure.
SecureView works in part by providing each person with their own individualized view of information. It does so by automatically embedding invisible watermarks in nearly any type of digital information, including text, images, and applications (with more formats and workflows coming soon). These invisible watermarks use EchoMark’s pioneering forensic steganography techniques to form a digital fingerprint within the content itself that is unique to each person who receives the information.
If EchoMarked information is leaked through a digital copy/fragment, a camera photo of a computer screen or printout, or even manually re-typed into another computer, the source can be quickly identified. This highly innovative technique is useful for both intentional leaks and accidental information spills. Equally important, it doesn’t get in the way of legitimate communications. No other solution protects against the ‘analog hole’ (i.e., taking a picture of content) commonly exploited by insiders to leak or steal content. Our vision is that all private information will be forensically watermarked and tied to the identity of the person accessing it. I see it as a bit analogous to shared passwords. Decades ago, shared passwords were surprisingly common. Today, they are viewed as egregiously insufficient. Years from now, distributing identical copies of information to each person will be viewed the same way – woefully inadequate for maintaining the privacy of information.
SecureView eliminates the need for email attachments or downloadable files and works seamlessly across organizational boundaries. Email is one of the most common ways that information leaves the organization and is improperly disclosed to others through both leaks and spills. Email attachments are easily forwarded to others outside of the organization where protection, tracking, retention policies, and control are completely lost. Email attachments also create copies of the private information stored indefinitely on end-user devices. These copies are subject to unauthorized access by external threats. Email attachments can also be accidentally or purposely saved to files and copied in many ways far beyond the control of the sender or organization.
In response to growing concerns about email attachments, some teams and organizations have resorted to using network file sharing including through Microsoft OneDrive, GDrive, DropBox, Box, etc. Unfortunately, these solutions still permit the downloading of files and result in some of the very same risks for unauthorized disclosure.
Other information protection solutions try to monitor or block the flow of email attachments or file downloads, but fail to provide a functional alternative, and therefore get in the way of legitimate usage causing understandable end user backlash. SecureView allows you to easily share a document or presentation through a link that you can distribute using your electronic communications channel of choice (i.e., email, Teams, Slack, SMS, intranet websites, etc.) while optionally preventing file downloads. The publisher can define the access control permissions to match the needs of the information and organization.
By optionally integrating SecureView with your organization’s email system, you can automatically convert email attachments to much safer SecureView links to further reduce the chances of data exfiltration. All of this can happen automatically without any end-user actions or training. SecureView also eliminates the challenges of email attachments that are otherwise too big for email. It even offers the added benefit of increased protection from malware via malicious email attachments.
SecureView provides viewer analytics so that the publisher knows who, when, and where insiders are accessing their documents. This information is an important foundational aspect of security to aid in unauthorized disclosure investigations. Previously, such analytics were often restricted to the Information Technology (IT) department. The problem is that the IT team often lacks context on who merits access to a specific document. By also letting the publisher of the information actively see how the information is flowing, they can provide an additional safeguard against oversharing and insights into unauthorized disclosure.
Try it today
Together, these SecureView capabilities make information sharing more secure, more insightful, and more convenient for everyone involved.
SecureView is enterprise ready. It can be deployed in minutes for an entire organization with highly customizable policies and integrations with Microsoft Exchange, Gmail, and other platforms. Once deployed, an organization’s information is automatically protected.
SecureView is available for anyone to try out for free at EchoMark.com, or contact us to learn more.
Troy Batterberry founded EchoMark in 2022 and is the current CEO. Previously, he was a Corporate Vice President at Microsoft as the product leader for Teams Meetings, Calling, and Events, collectively used by over 300M people each month. Prior to that, he led a wide variety of features, products, and businesses at Microsoft including for Windows, Internet Explorer/Edge, PlayReady DRM, Hohm, Bing, MSN, Xbox, Dynamics, Microsoft.com, and Microsoft stores during his 25 years with the company. Before Microsoft, he was an engineer with Sony, where he helped lead the creation of the very first movies on demand entertainment system on commercial aircraft. He started his professional career as a civilian with the US Navy doing weapons research and analysis of missile defense systems. Troy graduated from the University of Southern California with a MS in Information Systems, and from North Dakota State University with a BS in Electrical and Electronic Engineering.
