Verifying the origin and integrity of invoices, machine statements, orders, software and software updates, and various other data that you receive from organizations in your ecosystem can be cumbersome. But the fall-out from failing to verify that data can be worse - even dangerous.
If a customer or partner sends you something in good faith, but a denial-of-service or man-in-the-middle attacker or courier company changes that thing before you get it, you can run into big risks.
A doctored photo could lead media to mistakenly report false information. Incorrect data could lead a bank and/or its high-net-worth customers to lose significant money. Faulty sensor data in defense or industrial operations could be even worse.
If you can’t verify, store and later audit that the information you got from an ecosystem partner is the same data that you have now, you could also run into problems in the future. Imagine you want to file an insurance claim saying a problem occurred because another organization gave you the wrong data. The crucial data you need to prove your case is in the other organization’s system, and you can’t get to it. Even if you kept a copy, how do you prove it’s genuine? And the other company could modify its database. So now there are two versions of “the truth.”
Data is the driver of a vast swath of critical operations at businesses and other organizations. You need to know that the data you use has integrity and will be there when you need it.
Here is a guide on how you can make that happen.
Start authenticating data
Everybody knows that you need to authenticate people when they sign into your systems. The world has had passwords and processes such as two-factor authentication for decades. There are no more open services. Authenticating people when they log in is now a no-brainer.
Digitization also has led to the automation of machines. So, machines are now authenticated as well. You don’t just let any device enter your corporate network.
And now there is so much data changing hands - and, effectively, controlling the world - that data needs authenticating too before it can be trusted to drive machines and decisions. You need to know that data is authentic, meaning it came from where you thought it came from and says what you think it should say. It is therefore critical to authenticate data so that you only let verified data into your business systems and processes.
Avoid changing your existing systems and processes
Up to now typical approaches to data authentication have been pretty clunky. Some of these approaches try to bind together integrity, authenticity and metadata with a secrecy layer. Others bundle together and mark up the file. Or you need to put everything into a single and specific application suite.
It’s all very intrusive. And it’s not necessarily foolproof. Consider digital signatures, for example. You can simply take off the signature, and the file still works. So, it really doesn’t cover all bases.
Avoid using these unwieldly and sometimes ineffective approaches. Instead, layer document verification on top of your existing systems. Now you and your stakeholders will benefit from integrity, transparency and trust - and you can leave your existing operations alone.
Reclaim a significant portion of your life
Have you heard the word administrivia? It’s a term that describes the time-consuming yet trivial administrative tasks to which businesspeople dedicate their time every day. While this work is important and can ensure proper provenance of documents, some people feel their creative brain is wasted on doing paperwork. Others are happy to do paperwork, but find it takes too long. New document verification technology can help both of these groups.
Account executives, business quality administrators, program managers and anybody else who deals with documents from other companies typically spend several minutes every single day manually verifying documents by checking their bookkeeping, making phones calls and the like. When they only had to verify one or even 10 documents a day, this worked just fine. But such manual processes can’t scale fast enough for the speed and volume of today’s digital traffic.
However, new technology that enables people to verify document provenance with a drag-and-drop process now trims down what could take up to half an hour every day to just seconds - giving people back a good chunk of their time every day for life. And new API-based solutions can trim that time down to zero by automatically verifying all data of a certain type or in a particular location.
Reduce your risk and realize the dream of digital transformation
Data is the new frontier for cybersecurity. If you don’t get on board, you will find it more and more difficult and expensive to keep up with the threats that regularly bring down businesses.
Yet loads of people - including creative brains - sit in front of computers at companies manually checking and filing data that has already been automatically processed, just in case something goes wrong. This approach doesn’t scale. Clearly, digital transformation isn’t delivering the way it should.
But by taking the steps detailed above, adopting a position of data authenticity based on verifiable provenance, you can easily and automatically authenticate the data your organization uses for its critical business decisions and your creative human teammates can spend less time on mundane administrivia. This is how digital transformation should be.
