“Managing Information Risk in the Extended Enterprise: Why Corporate Compliance & IT Security Must Join Forces”

Boston, MA -- (ReleaseWire) -- 11/01/2010 -- Brainloop (http://www.brainloop.com), the leading supplier of software solutions for high-security management of confidential documents, today issued a white paper that looks at the challenges of managing security across the entire document lifecycle. Brainloop is used internationally by hundreds of renowned companies including BMW, Deloitte and Eurocopter, for document compliance management and secure collaboration involving highly confidential documents throughout the extended enterprise.

Titled "Managing Information Risk in the Extended Enterprise: Why Corporate Compliance and IT Security Must Join Forces," the paper is authored by Michael Rasmussen of Corporate Integrity LLC, a noted authority in understanding governance, risk and compliance (GRC) processes and considered the first analyst to define and model the GRC market for professional services and technology.

The paper examines how the distributed nature of working with confidential documents in collaborative settings between employees, external auditors, strategic partners, or any other individuals outside the corporate network poses a serious security risk. Traditional IT security tools do not protect documents outside the firewall. Intellectual property, trade secrets, financial and legal papers, customer lists and other highly sensitive data must be managed under a set of controls that include authentication, audit tracking, rights management, and role-based access control.

"Risk and compliance issues are compounded by the pervasive nature of electronic documents. The more sensitive a document is, the more likely it will need to travel outside the organization, increasing the likelihood of risk exposure," notes Rasmussen.

"The traditional infrastructure approach to security – firewalls, network access control, endpoint security – cannot protect collaboration in a dynamic and extended business environment. If an organization closely restricts and monitors online collaboration without providing a secure alternative, users are forced to send documents as email attachments -- completely unprotected."

One challenge the paper notes is the necessity of "changing the security culture in the organization from an endpoint or network infrastructure-centric view to an information-centric view of security. This includes a new paradigm of managing security across the entire document lifecycle – even when they are outside the firewall."

The paper further makes the case for why compliance and IT security must join forces to deliver a secure online collaboration platform, with the stated goal of empowering end users, vendors and partners with a transparent means of supporting security policies.

Sourced and vetted by IT security, this platform must meet corporate standards for security certification, enterprise integration, choice of delivery model (cloud-based or onsite), Service Level Agreements (SLAs), and flexibility to apply the right level of secure collaboration relevant to the level of risk exposure within the document.

Compliance and legal issues such as electronic discovery and litigation risks weigh heavily on the decision and evaluation of a document compliance management solution. Legal, financial and contract-related licensing documents all require documentation of accesses, non-repudiation and control over document integrity.

Rasmussen writes, "It's time to stop fighting collaborative processes that end-users have so avidly embraced, and objectively look at securing online document collaboration across extended business relationships to take full advantage of its benefits."

To read the Brainloop white paper, "Managing Information Risk in the Extended Enterprise," go to: http://www.brainloop.com/fileadmin/assets/PDFs/White_Papers/brainloop_white_paper_managing_information_risk.pdf

About Brainloop
Brainloop, with offices in Boston and Munich, is the leading supplier of software solutions for high-security document collaboration. Brainloop's secure online workspace is a virtual document safe that enables secure filing, editing and distribution of highly confidential documents within a single company, and beyond. All contents are powerfully protected from unauthorized internal or external access, and all actions within the application are documented by a tamper-proof audit trail. Frequent uses include contract negotiations, collecting data and compiling quarterly reports, collaboration with external auditors and counsel, and any other communication that contains confidential information.

Brainloop is used internationally by hundreds of renowned companies including BMW, Deutsche Telekom, Eurocopter, Galileo Industries, Premiere and ThyssenKrupp. Leading law firms and investment banks use this solution for the complete life cycle of M&A transactions. Strategic partners of Brainloop are HP, IZB, Microsoft and T-Systems Business Services. http://www.brainloop.com

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Boston, MA -- (ReleaseWire) -- 10/25/2010 -- One of the requirements of the European Union's REACH (Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation and Restriction of Chemicals) legislation, which came into effect on July 1, 2007, is that all companies involved in registering a chemical have the obligation to share data about it. After evaluating the systems available on the market, LANXESS has selected the Brainloop Secure Dataroom to enable it to provide this information in a protected environment. With its encryption technology, two-factor login with a password and a PIN texted to the user's cell phone, and the end-to-end document security right through to the desktop, the web-based data room fulfills the company's key requirements for security, protection of its expertise, and convenient communication in the best possible way.

LANXESS owns highly valuable information relevant to the registration of substances in compliance with REACH. According to predefined REACH guidelines, this information should be available to all registrants with a view to sharing costs.

"The way companies share information in the context of REACH processes is very variable," comments Dr. Bernd Woost, Information Technology, LANXESS Germany. "Some companies use commercial portals where this sensitive data can be stored and viewed. Others rely on email, but we find this unsuitable as the documents are sometimes very large. That's why we looked for a secure yet convenient platform to publish and share our valuable study results. The REACH agreement processes are very time-consuming anyway, so we wanted this platform to make them significantly more efficient."

The web-based Brainloop Secure Dataroom, in combination with Adobe LiveCycle Rights Management, meets the company's requirement for a way to provide all study results securely. The solution ensures that the viewing and editing permissions, which LANXESS defines in the data room or on a central server, remain active even after a registration dossier has been downloaded onto a user's desktop. These permissions include special usage limitations to prevent the document from being changed, printed, or forwarded to other people. To give an example, the user receives his or her own personal copy of a document that is encrypted when saved and cannot be opened by other users. Also, it is automatically blocked after the predefined expiry date and is no longer visible on the desktop.

"The registration documents contain very valuable data that must be rigorously protected and prevented from distribution by simple copy and paste after it's been downloaded from the data room," explains Dr. Woost. "Time is another important factor, as all registrations are subject to certain deadlines. The Brainloop solution enables us to guarantee end-to-end security through to the user's desktop while making it quick and convenient for interested parties to find the information they need in the familiar PDF format."

The security features of the combined Brainloop Secure Dataroom and Adobe LiveCycle Rights Management solution have also proved very advantageous for compliance processes. LANXESS is able to apply centrally-defined security guidelines to documents throughout their lifecycle and their usage history is recorded and traceable. In this way, the company automatically achieves key risk management and compliance goals.

ABOUT BRAINLOOP
Brainloop, with offices in Boston and Munich, is the leading supplier of software solutions for high-security document collaboration. Brainloop's secure online workspace is a virtual document safe that enables secure filing, editing and distribution of highly confidential documents within a single company, and beyond. All contents are powerfully protected from unauthorized internal or external access, and all actions within the application are documented by a tamper-proof audit trail. Frequent uses include contract negotiations, collecting data and compiling quarterly reports, collaboration with external auditors and counsel, and any other communication that contains confidential information.

Brainloop is used internationally by hundreds of renowned companies including BMW, Deutsche Telekom, Eurocopter, Galileo Industries, Premiere and ThyssenKrupp. Leading law firms and investment banks use this solution for the complete life cycle of M&A transactions. Strategic partners of Brainloop are HP, IZB, Microsoft and T-Systems Business Services. http://www.brainloop.com

Copyright © 2010, Brainloop Inc. All rights reserved. All trademarks mentioned in this document are the property of their respective owners.

For more information on this press release visit: http://www.releasewire.com/press-releases/release-3.htm

Boston, MA -- (ReleaseWire) -- 10/18/2010 -- While the pros and cons of cloud computing are being discussed at technical conferences, well over half of the blue chip companies on Germany's DAX 30 stock market index have demonstrated their confidence in cloud-based services. They use these in different ways - for example, the telecom giant Deutsche Telekom provides internal cloud services to its users, while luxury carmaker BMW uses SaaS applications. "Many companies will just copy the cloud concept's model and characteristics, then implement clouds internally or in loose partnerships," says Gartner analyst Robert Watson, who currently believes the private cloud has the most growth potential.

However, companies are still very reticent about sharing business-critical documents via the cloud. Their competitive edge often depends on working with information in an efficient and - crucially - secure manner. Yet many enterprises find it hard to achieve these conflicting goals: securing business-critical data while facilitating its distribution to people within and outside the company who need to work with it. They also have concerns about the cloud in terms of fulfilling compliance obligations, which have arisen from increasing regulatory and market pressure and are designed to make business processes more transparent. Often, companies face a perplexing dilemma: how can they work effectively with confidential board meeting, human resources, and M&A documents whose content must be rigorously protected while remaining easily accessible for authorized users?

A secure data room that underpins document compliance management is the best way forward for firms in this situation because it gives users both security and efficiency when sharing and working with sensitive documents. The data room, with multiple levels of security delivered by an external service provider, houses all of the documents needed for a specific project or group of people and makes them accessible in a "digital safe". The service provider partners with a certified data center that is specialized in secure data storage, whose distributed locations and high level of resilience can help sweep away any lingering doubts about the cloud. Access to confidential documents is provided via a browser and password, and there is no need for any additional software installation. The data room is the ideal way to resolve the conundrum of how to provide a fast, effective, secure and traceable way to share confidential documents in the cloud.

About Brainloop
Brainloop, with offices in Boston and Munich, is the leading supplier of software solutions for high-security document collaboration. Brainloop's secure online workspace is a virtual document safe that enables secure filing, editing and distribution of highly confidential documents within a single company, and beyond. All contents are powerfully protected from unauthorized internal or external access, and all actions within the application are documented by a tamper-proof audit trail. Frequent uses include contract negotiations, collecting data and compiling quarterly reports, collaboration with external auditors and counsel, and any other communication that contains confidential information.

Brainloop is used internationally by hundreds of renowned companies including BMW, Deutsche Telekom, Eurocopter, Galileo Industries, Premiere and ThyssenKrupp. Leading law firms and investment banks use this solution for the complete life cycle of M&A transactions. Strategic partners of Brainloop are HP, IZB, Microsoft and T-Systems Business Services. http://www.brainloop.com

Copyright © 2010, Brainloop Inc. All rights reserved. All trademarks mentioned in this document are the property of their respective owners.

For more information on this press release visit: http://www.releasewire.com/press-releases/release-3.htm