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In the manufacturing realm, employees are often remotely located on a factory floor, a logistics or warehousing center, or in the field.
Document control is the cornerstone of quality, compliance, environmental health and safety (EHS) and process excellence. Quality process information, work instructions, job descriptions, and specifications must all be created, revised, distributed, tracked and “retired” with consistency and efficiency. While other elements of the corporation are working on various stages of automation and digital transformation, the quality department and the documents that fuel the organization remain mired in manual (or email-aided) processes.
This situation can be remedied with automation, too, but first it’s important to consider the backdrop of what makes effective document control and how it can drive operational excellence. Let’s look at ten elements to keep top of mind when considering deploying an automated document control system.
No two document types are alike, clearly. For instance, a job description has different review and approval process steps that involve different people and departments than does a work instruction or engineering specification.
A document control system designed around best practices will allow you to configure dedicated workflows for different document types and personalize the entire document cycle. A flexible solution lets you build the document control system around your processes, rather than having to adapt your processes to the requirements of a piece of software.
Another critical aspect of document control is the ability to segment metadata, or high-level information that describes each document. Examples of metadata include information on a document’s:
Metadata is important for tasks like categorizing, reporting, searching and filtering documents. A system that lets you include metadata based on document type allows you to create unique fields, categories, keywords and more. These configurable forms are essential to optimizing your document control system to meet your organization’s unique needs.
Word, Excel and PowerPoint are the standard for creating documents in most companies today. That’s why you want to look for a document control system that works well with Microsoft Office. When these systems are integrated, any changes you make in a document control form will sync with the associated Office file (and vice versa) while preserving metadata. This linkage ensures consistency between files which eliminates costly and time-consuming version control errors.
A good document control system does far more than serve as a gatekeeper for checking documents in or out of a virtual library. You also need a controlled process for review, approval and distribution according to the workflow you’ve configured for the specific document type.
Flexible routing options are a necessity, as are intelligent business rules that eliminate inefficiencies and bottlenecks in the process. What specifically should you look for?
Critical to any automated document control system is the ability to train your workforce on any changes to documents, such as procedures and specifications. During document creation and revision, you should be able to specify the type of training associated with the document and link new requirements to the employee training system.
A flexible document control system integrated with employee training lets you automatically:
Some companies put documents in a holding pattern before releasing them, allowing employees to undergo training while documents are awaiting release. This process ensures employees are knowledgeable about the new document when it goes live. Some systems even allow you to create tests to verify that people understand the updated documents.
A good document control system does far more than serve as a gatekeeper for checking documents in or out of a virtual library.
Given the inevitable document changes that are routinely required, change request and revision control both need their own customized workflows. These processes are all about driving consistency, efficiency and control to ensure:
If your organization has a tremendous number of documents and associated data within its system, you need flexible tools that help you visualize, streamline and share that data.
The ability to filter documents based on metadata—as noted previously—is only one important capability. Built-in reporting engines that let you create ad-hoc or scheduled reports on the health of the document control system are also important. Not only does this keep people on track with overdue documents, it simplifies administrative tasks like reporting and record-keeping, so that quality professionals can focus on the strategic priorities that matter most to their organization.
Data and document security are fundamental to compliance and process excellence. You need to make sure that only appropriate levels of personnel can access, approve, review and revise key documents.
Your document control system should make it easy to configure viewing, edit and approval permissions for individual users or groups. By making documents available on a need-to-know basis, you can be sure that your team is working efficiently, safely and securely, even in multi-site organizations.
With the increased prevalence of mobile devices in the workplace, many QMS applications now offer mobile document control capabilities. In the manufacturing realm, employees are often remotely located on a factory floor, a logistics or warehousing center or in the field. In situations like this, a document control system that works the same way on the mobile device as it does on a workstation brings a tremendous advantage.
Once approved, most documents should not be altered without going through the defined change request process. By converting attachments from Word or Excel to PDF, you can reduce the likelihood that users will download an editable attachment and modify it on their own. Your document control system should also keep the original, editable attachments hidden and secure for your subject matter experts to easily access as part of the change request process.
The document control system is a central hub for the information that drives your quality system. It is the foundation for compliance and continuous improvement and provides a single source of truth for the policies, practices and regulations that drive your QMS and EHS initiatives.
An effective document control system:
Backed by an integrated QMS, these capabilities deliver a powerful platform for process excellence, unleashing new opportunities to drive your business forward.

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vivo, the leading global smartphone brand, announces the launch of the newest member in the Y series, vivo Y15C in Pakistan. With the launch of the Y15C, vivo furthers its vision of catering to the youth with ‘feature-rich smartphones’ and delivering meaningful innovation across different price ranges.
Ensuring a seamless entertainment experience, the Y15C features a 6.51-inch Halo FullView™ Display with Eye Protection*. The all-new vivo Y15C has been designed to fit the lifestyles of the young consumers who are always ‘On the Go’ and want a powerful handset to keep them going throughout the day. 
New Age Camera for Superior Clicks 
The 13MP AI Dual Camera on the back, coupled with an f/2.2 large aperture, reveals minute details in the frame and ensures that the subject is always glowing up, thus delivering an elevated photography experience to users. It is supported by a wide range of features to capture any scenario in the full effect of clarity.
Y15C presents Face Beauty, Photo, Video, Live Photo, Time-Lapse, Panorama, Documents and Pro Mode to ease the everyday shooting experience. Additionally, it comes with a 2MP Super Macro Camera on the back that offers a 4cm focus, which helps to discover tiny and exciting worlds full of gems hidden from naked eyes.
Furthermore, for stunning selfies, the smartphone is equipped with an 8MP Front Camera.
vivo’s Y15C boasts a 5000mAh (TYP) battery that ensures plenty of life every day. A single full charge can provide up to 18.74 hours of online HD movie streaming, or 7.89 hours of intensive gameplay. It is also engineered to offer 5V/1A Reverse Charging, so your Y15C can be used to charge other devices, like a mobile power bank.
Immersive Display and Stylish Design 
Y15C presents a 6.51-inch* Halo FullView™ Display with HD+ (1600×720) resolution to provide an immersive viewing experience to users while streaming videos, surfing the internet, and playing games. It is worth noting that the display’s brightness gets automatically adjusted based on the ambient conditions or surroundings. It does not stop there! Y15C also has a special Eye Protection Mode* that, when used, filters out harmful blue light to prevent eye strain for the user and keep the screen looking magnificent while remaining gentle on the eyes.
The impressive features are packed into a slender 8.28mm thin body with a 3D back cover. It is a lightweight handset offering a comfortable hold and smooth grip.
Dazzling Colours
vivo Y15C comes in two vivid hues to choose from: Mystic Blue and Wave Green.
Elevated Experience
Widely known for being a youth-centric brand, vivo has integrated several features to upgrade and enhance the youth’s experience and has customized the smartphone for the ‘On the Go’ generation.
Other Features: 
The vivo Y15C runs on Funtouch OS 12 (Android 12) and comes with more special features that come in handy for day-to-day use:
Price and Availability
vivo Y15C is available for purchase across Pakistan at the price Rs. 31,999 only. vivo offers one-year warranty for vivo Y15C along with 15 days of free replacement and 6 months warranty for accessories. vivo Y15C is duly approved by Pakistan Telecommunications Authority and supports all mobile networks in Pakistan. Zong customers can also get 12GB Free Mobile Internet by using their 4G SIM card in Slot 1 (2GB Internet / month for 6 months).

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This is a Brookings Center on Regulation and Markets policy brief.
While there is little debate that digital forces are playing an increasingly crucial role in the economy, there is limited understanding of the importance of the digital infrastructure that underlies this role. Much of the discussion around digital infrastructure has focused on broadband availability (which is certainly important), but the role of free and open source software (FOSS or OSS) has gone underappreciated. FOSS—software whose source code is public, is often created by decentralized volunteers, and can be freely used and modified by anyone—has come to play a vital role in the modern economy. It is baked into technology we use every day (cars, phones, websites, etc.), as well as into various aspects of critical infrastructure including our finance and energy systems.
Like physical infrastructure, this digital infrastructure requires regular investment to further enable innovation, commerce, and a flourishing economy. However, also like physical infrastructure, there is a market failure in the private sector that leads to an underinvestment in digital infrastructure. Therefore, there is a clear need for government investment and regulation to ensure the future health, security, and growth of the FOSS ecosystem that has become indispensable to the modern economy.
In this article I lay out policy proposals based on my academic research and that of others, as well as policies that exist in other countries who are ahead of the United States on investing in this critical asset. I first discuss the overall challenge FOSS faces and the limits of existing policy in the U.S. (which are primarily focused on government usage of FOSS, not on investing in the FOSS ecosystem directly). Finally, I present 11 policy proposals separated into four domains of focus: creating an open source program office; measuring and understanding the FOSS ecosystem; enhancing the positive economic impact of FOSS; and securing the FOSS ecosystem. Although there is no silver bullet for guaranteeing the future health and growth of FOSS, these proposals will go a long way towards ensuring FOSS can continue to play its essential role in enabling the modern U.S. economy to grow and flourish.
At the highest level, the challenge related to FOSS is that despite its value to the modern economy, its decentralized and free nature leads to both an underappreciation of this value and an underinvestment in its growth and security.

Source: XKCD, https://xkcd.com/2347/, licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5 License
On the value side, although it has been estimated that up to 98% of codebases include FOSS, it can be difficult to measure its value. Traditional measures of the value of a product, such as multiplying the number of times a product is used times the price of the product and subtracting input costs, do not work. The price is zero, the labor is volunteered, and measuring the volume of usage is extremely difficult due to the distributed nature of FOSS and the fact that it can be copied and reused freely. Despite these challenges, there have been some recent efforts to value FOSS by myself and others. For example, our early efforts to measure the value of just one piece of FOSS—the widely used Apache web server—found that in 2013, it added up to $12 billion to the U.S. economy, despite not showing up directly in any GDP statistics. More recently, a European Commission sponsored report found that in 2018, EU companies invested roughly €1 billion into FOSS creation, which resulted in up to a €95 billion benefit for FOSS users in the EU. Similar estimates for the U.S. investment in FOSS were $33 billion in 2019. However, despite these attempts, we have only scratched the surface of truly understanding the value FOSS provides to the economy and modern life. This is even more so the case when considering the value created in the context of digital autonomy, as an increased reliance on FOSS can limit the occurrence of single points of failure where a company or country is beholden to a particular company that provides proprietary software or owns a patent (especially in the context of communications standards, like 5G).

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On the investment side, the challenge is twofold. First, despite increasing evidence for a high rate of return to public and private investment in FOSS that can enhance competitiveness and innovation, the U.S. has yet to make a concerted effort to directly invest in it—beyond just supporting its use in federal agencies. The U.S.’s investments in the Global Positioning System (GPS) is an example of the success such investments can have—U.S. investments in GPS, which is made freely available to users, have enabled $1.4 trillion of economic gains for U.S. companies (which the government receives tax revenue on). Likewise, our work on Apache showed that government investments in FOSS can lead to a rate of return of at least 17%, more than double the U.S. government’s commonly used baseline of 7% representing a good investment opportunity. Broader analysis in the European Commission report revealed a cost-benefit ratio of roughly 1:4 for FOSS investments by private companies, and my own work on government support of FOSS in France showed a variety of positive outcomes, including as much as an 18% increase in the founding of French IT-related startups and as much as a 14% increase in the number of French workers employed in IT-related jobs. Even for companies, my research has shown that not only does using FOSS lead to productivity gains but investment in FOSS can pay dividends as companies that contribute to FOSS obtain up to 100% more productive value from using FOSS than their free-riding peers.
Second, an underinvestment in FOSS can result in security concerns that have economy-wide consequences. The most recent evidence of this was the 2021 discovery of the Log4Shell vulnerability in the FOSS logging package log4j. Deployed across a vast range of digital applications, the vulnerability was originally introduced in the code in 2013 and exposed tens of millions of devices to a devastating security vulnerability and illustrated the urgent need to improve security in open source software. Jen Easterly, the director of the United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) called Log4Shell “the most serious vulnerability I’ve seen in my decades-long career,” and well before most organizations could patch the vulnerability, there were over 800,000 attacks using it in a 72-hour period, including some by Chinese and Iranian government-sponsored actors. Government policy can help identify and address these vulnerabilities in a timelier fashion.
The biggest limit to existing U.S. policies related to FOSS is that they are nearly all focused on the federal government’s use of, creation of, and purchasing of technology for its own systems. No policies are targeted at measuring, investing in, or securing the FOSS ecosystem as a whole or in a direct manner. Although my prior research has shown that governmental policies favoring the usage of FOSS in technology procurement can have important positive spillovers to a country (as well as cost savings), this is more of a second-order impact rather than the first-order impact direct investment can have. There are numerous examples of such procurement policies. As early as 2004, agencies of the U.S. federal government started to clarify their stances towards FOSS. However, it was not until the Office of Management and Budget memorandum M-16-21 in 2016 that a clearer pro-FOSS stance was taken. M-16-21 required that all federal agencies should a) make all new custom code for any federal agency available for reuse across all federal agencies, and b) release at least 20 percent of new custom code as FOSS for anyone to use. These efforts were coordinated through the Code.gov website, originally developed under the Office of the Federal Chief Information Officer and now administered by the U.S. General Services Administration (although recently defunded and essentially static). To this day, M-16-21 is the primary guidance on how federal agencies should approach FOSS and is the primary authority cited within numerous agencies related to their FOSS stance (e.g., Department of Commerce and Department of Defense). These efforts were expanded upon with the May 2021 White House Executive Order 14028, which included a section requiring all federal government software purchases to include a software bill of materials (SBOM) that clearly stated what other software (including FOSS) was built into the purchased software.
Beyond M-16-21, a handful of other governmental efforts have been proposed but not passed. For example, the House version of the 2022 National Defense Authorization Act included funding for a FOSS security center within DHS, but the funding did not make it into the final bill. At the state level, New York has introduced a bill to give a tax credit for expenses related to developing FOSS in every legislative session since 2009, but the bill has never gotten out of committee. Even the much-praised bipartisan infrastructure package passed in late 2021 focused its digital infrastructure investments nearly exclusively on broadband availability and did not address investments in FOSS.
Most recently, in January 2022, in response to the aforementioned Log4Shell vulnerability, the White House National Security Council (NSC) held a meeting with companies like Google and Microsoft; open-source organizations including the Linux Foundation, the Apache Software Foundation, and the Open Source Security Foundation (OpenSSF); and numerous federal agencies and departments. The meeting focused on preventing, finding, and shortening response time to FOSS vulnerabilities and discussed various potential public-private partnerships. Although there were no concrete pledges from the meeting, the intent was to start a discussion, identify possible paths forward, and commit to future meetings that would yield specific commitments by the various stakeholders. In May of 2022, the first follow-up meeting was held and it identified 10 areas of focus to improve OSS security and provided specific plans of action and a call for $150 million in funding over two years. The intent was for this funding to come from private companies, not the government, and some large tech companies have already committed $30 million to assist in the effort.
Given the lack of federal policies directly supporting the FOSS ecosystem, I lay out 11 policy proposals that can help to support the FOSS ecosystem in critical ways (overviewed in Table 1). These policies are grouped into four domains. The first domain is to create a new office to oversee all FOSS related activity within the federal government. The second domain focuses on measuring and understanding the FOSS ecosystem, which is necessary given the distributed nature of FOSS, and the lack of a clear understanding of how pervasive it is in the modern economy. The third domain considers avenues for investing in FOSS to help enhance the economic competitiveness of the U.S. The fourth domain focuses on methods for securing existing and future FOSS to reduce the likelihood of some of the issues mentioned above. Some of the policy recommendations build upon the European Commission report mentioned above, for which I was an outside advisor, but consider how (and where) they could be applied in the U.S. Further, although all of these recommendations are focused on FOSS, they can be thought of to include free and open source hardware as well, which is a smaller space than FOSS but is rapidly growing and is increasingly important to the economy.
Table 1: Recommendations for Strengthening Digital Infrastructure

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He tried the same challenge which caused Archie Battersbee’s death
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A teenager who was found dead in his bedroom was taking part in a dangerous viral TikTok challenge, according to his heartbroken mum. Leon Brown, 14, was found unresponsive by his mother Lauryn Keating, 30, at their home in Dunbartonshire, Scotland on August 25.
As reported by the Daily Record, she later learned he had tried the same shocking challenge trend believed to have caused 12-year-old Archie Battersbee to suffer a fatal brain injury which later led to his death. Mum Lauryn has been left devastated by her son’s passing and has issued an important warning to other families about the online game.
Lauryn said: “One of Leon’s friends told me he had been doing the challenge on Facetime with them after seeing it on TikTok. My Leon thought he would be the one to try it first. Him and his friends probably thought it was a laugh and a joke.
Read more: Archie Battersbee, 12, dies as life support turned off after legal battle row
“One of the kids who he was on Facetime with told me what he had done. She said they thought they would wake up. But Leon didn’t come back around. It went horribly wrong.” Lauryn said she wanted other parents to be aware of the dangers of the challenge.
“I had heard of this challenge, because of what happened to Archie Battersbee,” she said. “But you just don’t expect your own child to do it. Please warn them, these online challenges aren’t worth their lives. They aren’t worth ‘likes’ or whatever they are doing it for.”
A TikTok spokesman said the ‘safety of our community is our priority’ and any content of that nature ‘would be removed if found’. Speaking of popular youngster Leon, who was a pupil at Our Lady’s High School in Cumbernauld, Lauryn said: “He was the happiest, funniest wee boy ever.
“He was a bit of a class clown and he liked to make people laugh. Everything was always a joke and a carry on to Leon. He was just a wee cheeky boy. But he meant so much to me.”
It is understood Leon and his friends had seen the challenge on TikTok. Lauryn added: “I went on TikTok and wrote out words similar to [the name of the challenge]. The amount of video results that came up on it is ridiculous.”
The tragedy of Leon’s death comes just weeks after Archie Battersbee died on August 6. Archie was also found unconscious by his mother Hollie Dance at his home in Essex in April this year. The young boy had suffered a “catastrophic” brain injury and was placed on life support.
He passed away after his family lost a long-running legal battle to continue the treatment that was keeping him alive. Ms Dance has publicly spoken out on her belief that Archie had participated in the same challenge.
TikTok told the Record it has measures in place to prevent users from sharing videos on the trend and searching the challenge in question takes users to a safety centre on the app. Users are also able to report any videos that contain graphic content.
TikTok also deletes videos of the challenge from the platform.
Leon’s friends and loved ones gathered to release balloons in his memory last week. A Celtic strip, signed with moving messages from his pals, was also mounted on a railing at their local park.
Lauryn now hopes Hoops football fans will get behind a round of applause for Leon during the 14th minute of the Old Firm match on Saturday so her much-loved son can be “14 forever”. Loved ones have now created a fundraiser to support Leon’s family. To donate click here.
A TikTok spokesperson said: “Our deepest sympathies go out to Leon Brown’s family during this incredibly difficult time. The safety of our community is our priority and we take any claim about a dangerous challenge very seriously. Content of this nature is prohibited on our platform and would be removed if found.”
A Police Scotland spokesperson said: “We were made aware of the sudden death of a 14-year-old boy at Ochilview Court in Cumbernauld around 8am on Thursday, 25 August, 2022. There are no suspicious circumstances surrounding his death and a report will be submitted to the Procurator Fiscal.”
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Open source is free software built collaboratively by a community of developers, often volunteers, for public use. Google, iPhones, the national power grid, surgical operating rooms, baby monitors, and military databases all run on this unique asset. 
However, open source has an urgent security problem. Open source is more ubiquitous and susceptible to persistent threats than ever before. Proprietary software has responded to threats by implementing thorough institutional security measures. The same care is not being given to open-source software—primarily due to misaligned incentives. 
First, open source’s primary beneficiaries—software vendors who profit from its use—are free-riders who lack incentives to contribute to the open-source projects they use. Second, these software vendors also lack incentives to secure the open-source code they use, introducing potentially vulnerable products into the software ecosystem. 
Attempts to address the open-source problem do not go far enough—a comprehensive institutional response to the incentives problem is needed.
Open Source Has a Security Problem
The free and critical software that keeps society online remains at risk. In early July, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and U.S. Coast Guard Cyber Command (CGCYBER) issued a joint cybersecurity advisory. The advisory warned companies that hackers, including state-sponsored advanced persistent threat (APT) actors, continue to exploit organizations that failed to patch the Log4Shell vulnerability, gaining unfettered access to proprietary systems. Just last week, the Cyber Safety Review Board, established by the Biden administration last year to systematically review and learn from cyber incidents, released its first report analyzing the Log4Shell incident and its implications. It echoed CISA’s concern about the vulnerability’s lasting impact on critical system security.
Log4j is Apache’s open-source Java-based error logging library and is used by major companies such as Google and governments alike. The vulnerability in Log4j, called Log4Shell, is said to have existed since 2013. Due to the nature of open source, this one bug, originally discovered in the Minecraft video game, risked taking down networks worldwide. Despite this risk, an April 2022 expert security report found that 60 percent of the nearly 3 billion devices affected by the Log4Shell vulnerability remain unpatched, even though it has been seven months since the vulnerability was discovered. Log4Shell remains a national concern because vendors are not exercising due care in incorporating open-source components into their products.
This lack of due care puts individuals’ data at risk, exposes companies’ intellectual property to theft, and endangers sensitive national security information. CISA Director Jen Easterly called Log4Shell “one of the most serious that I’ve seen in my entire career, if not the most serious.” It had a Common Vulnerability Scoring System Calculator severity score of 10 out of 10. (CVSS v3 is an open framework describing the severity and characteristics of a software vulnerability.) Despite these dire warnings, many companies continue to drag their feet in implementing the free and publicly available patches that would secure their systems against exploits of the vulnerability. 
The Log4Shell vulnerability is not alone: It is just one of a series of vulnerabilities found and exploited in open-source libraries. Most notably, the Equifax hack, which compromised the personal information of nearly 150 million Americans, was courtesy of an unpatched open-source vulnerability. Importantly, the culprit was not the developers of the code but the company that failed to implement a patch that promised to prevent the very thing that happened. Many observers complain that Equifax has suffered little consequence for its negligence, highlighting weak oversight and accountability structures. Just last month, the same type of open-source vulnerability at the root of the Equifax hack was found in popular Atlassian products. The vulnerability has been deemed critical on a severity scale and will impact affected devices “for at least the next couple of years.” 
Open Source and Its Vulnerabilities Are Everywhere 
An April 2022 industry study found that 97 percent of software contains some amount of open source. Open-source code was found in 100 percent of systems related to computer hardware and semiconductors, cybersecurity, energy and clean tech, “Internet of Things” devices, and internet and mobile app software. And it is not a negligible amount of open-source code—78 percent of the code reviewed was open source. Most concerningly, 81 percent of the codebases containing open source had at least one vulnerability, with an average of five high-risk or critical vulnerabilities per application that remain unpatched. 
But, open source’s ubiquity and the characteristics that make it valuable are also what make it a unique risk to digital infrastructure. With proprietary code, or closed software, a vulnerability would impact only that company and its customers. While these threats are still severe (like with SolarWinds), they are outmatched in scope by a vulnerability found in open-source software. When the same piece of code is used by hundreds of thousands of networks internationally, one vulnerability in one project can take countless critical systems offline. 
The solution is not to move away from open source. Freely available software offers numerous public policy benefits—from decreasing barriers to entry to increasing innovation. Simply put, its primary beneficiaries save the cost of developing or purchasing proprietary code by using open source instead, allowing them to invest limited resources in other valuable endeavors. The United States owes its dominance in technological innovation in large part to open-source code.
Moreover, open source is not inherently less secure than proprietary code: 89 percent of information technology executives believe that open source is at least as secure as proprietary code. Source code visibility has not been found to correlate to increased security risks. Rather, it can make projects more stable and secure. Indeed, corporations and government agencies recognize this. They are moving away from relying primarily on proprietary software, or closed-source systems, toward using more open-source code, according to a February RedHat study. Corporations are setting up open-source program offices (OSPO) to coordinate the use of open source and the Department of Defense has a formal policy permitting the use of open source in critical government systems. 
The issue is not the code: It is the lack of institutions securing the code. 
Open Source’s Problems: Resources and Incentives
Open source, like many public goods, suffers a free-rider problem. This resource is free, so anyone can use it. And it is infinitely reproducible, so any number of people can use it simultaneously. This is also technically true of roads and bridges; however, as many of us have personally experienced, roads and bridges are somewhat susceptible to overuse. Overuse, without adequate maintenance, can lead to deterioration, sometimes rendering these resources wholly unusable. Open source also suffers an overuse problem. As projects grow in popularity, support for them needs to ramp up—but that is not happening. 
About 30 percent of open-source projects, including some of the most popular ones, have only one maintainer (a developer tasked with reviewing code contributions, scanning for vulnerabilities, and addressing reported bugs). The 2014 Heartbleed attack—which affected nearly one-fifth of the internet—exploited a vulnerability in an open-source library that was maintained by two full-time developers who were solely responsible for over 500,000 lines of code. If software development resources were allocated optimally, then attacks like Heartbleed and Log4Shell could have been avoided. 
But, as is characteristic of public goods, market participants lack incentives to correct this inefficiency. Companies can profit from open source without expending any resources to improve it. Psychologists call this the bystander effect. When multiple parties have the capacity to solve a problem, each individual party feels less responsibility to take action. Although securing this public good is in every company’s self-interest, very few companies want to be the ones to take on that burden. There is little reason to think the market will correct itself without intervention. 
Researchers have called for targeted investments from government and consumers of open-source projects to fund more full-time maintainers for important projects and entities offering open-source security services for free. The open-source community has requested upstream contributions from its consumers—support in the form of code review and improvement. The open-source community is doing the best it can to maintain the large, critical projects the public relies on. To avoid open-source potholes, its developers need resources for sustained maintenance. Tax dollars fund public roads and bridges. Open source deserves the same support. 
Don’t Forget the Vendor
The weakest link in the software supply chain is the irresponsible software vendor. Even if the open-source community had all the resources it needed, open-source code would remain vulnerable due to poor vendor security practices. Heartbleed is illustrative. The open-source community responded rapidly, developing and distributing a patch on the same day the vulnerability was disclosed. Yet as of July 19, over 41,000 devices remain vulnerable.
Software vendors take open-source code out of the incubator, where it has no real-world effect, and incorporate it into a product they sell to the public. Often, there are several vendors in between the open-source developers building the project and the end users buying the product that uses that project. And vulnerabilities can be introduced at every stage of the supply chain. But they can also be mitigated at every link of the supply chain. 
Why are these open-source vendors so lax about open-source security practices? Because the only way to find an open-source vulnerability is to proactively look for it. Vendors are not similarly limited. They can learn about vulnerabilities in their proprietary code from security researchers, impacted customers, and software vendors contractually obligated to inform their customers about vulnerabilities. They are more likely to lean on these sources than invest in open-source money they could be using to protect their proprietary code. But the same incentives to find and disclose vulnerabilities do not govern open-source code. Unlike proprietary code, open-source code confers no intellectual property benefits to vendors, is not visibly tied to the vendor’s brand or reputation, is not governed by stringent contractual obligations, is not disclosed in contracts, and does not undergo the same rigorous code review. 
Software vendors regularly fail to scan for known and unknown vulnerabilities in the open-source code they use while building their products in the first instance—selling a product whose integrity cannot be assured. They often fail to continue scanning their products for open-source vulnerabilities discovered after the software has been sold. Software is dynamic—while the code in a product may not change, new vulnerabilities are being identified daily, creating an ongoing risk that one’s software can be exploited. The Log4Shell vulnerability illustrated the importance of multiple scans—Log4Shell was not a known vulnerability when vendors first incorporated the code into their products. Only those who scanned again later had a chance to find it.
Finally, some vendors fail to patch their software upon identifying a new vulnerability and provide that patch to affected customers. Even if a vendor scans for new vulnerabilities, it is a separate task to determine which vulnerabilities affect their products. Not all vulnerabilities in an open-source library require urgent fixes, but some do. Some vendors avoid this analysis and instead wait for evidence of their products being impacted before issuing a patch to customers. At that point, it can be too late. CISA has issued guidance recommending a Vulnerability Exploitability eXchange (VEX) document that would be able to inform customers proactively whether the product they were sold contains a vulnerability that requires a patch. These vendors are best suited to find the signal through the noise.
Current Interventions Are Not Enough 
What has been done about this? The question of software security has been on the government’s radar for a while. Since the Log4Shell incident, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has threatened companies that are slow to implement patches with enforcement actions. Even before Log4Shell, the White House issued an executive order addressing the software supply chain. The order required those companies selling to the federal government to take precautionary measures to identify and remediate vulnerabilities in software and to provide agency customers with a software bill of materials (SBOM) enumerating the various software components, including open-source components, contained in their products. 
SBOMs are useful. Without them, even the largest, most sophisticated technology companies took weeks to identify where they were vulnerable to attack, let alone patch each of those components. SBOMs specify where a reported vulnerability is in their system, increasing the speed with which they can fix the issue. The Biden administration imposed requirements on federal contractors, many of whom are the largest technology companies, hoping the rest of the industry would feel pressured to follow suit. 
But, SBOMs are insufficient. Thousands of devices remain vulnerable to Log4Shell and companies on average take 98 days to fix a vulnerability. This shows that existing requirements are too little, too late in the software lifecycle. They remain entirely voluntary for companies that do not sell to the federal government. They also do not address the failures of intermediaries who first introduce open-source code into software earlier in the supply chain. SBOM requirements and threats of enforcement actions for failure to patch vulnerabilities will not, on their own, provide necessary institutional oversight on open source. 
An SBOM is simply a list of the ingredients, or codebases, that comprise software you purchased. It does not provide a list of vulnerabilities nor does it impose any minimum security requirements on the vendor generating the SBOM. Comparable to a list of ingredients on a snack or medication you purchase, the information is only as useful as your ability to parse it. 
To operationalize an SBOM, a company must be able to read it, which is a challenge as there is no mandated standard format for an SBOM, and actually use it to check databases such as the National Vulnerability Database (NVD) for new vulnerabilities found in the software components the SBOM lists. These activities are costly and cumbersome. While Google and Intel might have the resources and security maturity to demand machine-readable SBOMs and regularly scan databases for new vulnerabilities that impact their systems, there are countless small businesses using open source that cannot. 
These small businesses are the companies that are driving the numbers such as outstanding critical vulnerabilities and average days to patch. One study found that 43 percent of all cyberattacks target small to medium-sized businesses. These are businesses limited in their ability to respond to a security issue reactively, which underscores the importance of shifting security left and developing more proactive measures.
Therefore, institutions must impose security requirements on software vendors just as those minimum quality requirements imposed on foods and drugs. Smaller, less sophisticated companies are beholden to the information provided by their software vendors, who may or may not be providing them with accurate SBOMs and the timely patches they need to secure their systems. A small business needs to be able to trust its vendor and cannot be expected to recreate the security checks a vendor should be doing.
The liability of any harm caused by an open-source vulnerability should lie with the party most at fault. Currently, software vendors attempt to shift security liability to the open-source maintainer by soliciting certifications of security practices via gargantuan questionnaires. They also attempt to disclaim all warranties on their products, shifting any liability for a defect to the end user. However, when a design or manufacturing defect in a product, such as a car, injures a consumer, the law holds accountable every link in the supply chain capable of having identified and remediated the defect. National Cyber Director Chris Inglis has suggested a similar approach for open source. 
Software vendors are best positioned to know the open-source code their software contains and to remediate vulnerabilities. They are the least cost avoider and reap the greatest monetary reward from these open-source libraries. The only open-source project with no vulnerabilities is the one with no users—by exposing the public to open source, vendors arguably introduce the vulnerability. It thus stands to reason that they should bear responsibility for finding and patching flaws. Minimum standards and accountability structures would expose vendors to liability, thereby motivating them to preemptively invest in better security practices.
Open Source Cannot Do It Alone
The open-source community is aware of its security problem. In fact, the community is already attempting to build out institutions and standards to secure open source. For example, the Open Source Security Foundation, or OpenSSF, has already met with the White House twice and has 10 dedicated workstreams all focused on securing the open-source ecosystem. Companies like Microsoft and Google, large open-source contributors, have pledged $30 million to support OpenSSF’s efforts. The Open Source Technology Improvement Fund (OSTIF) was founded recently to provide free security auditing services to open-source projects and continues to grow.
However, on its own, the open-source community does not have the leverage to demand the resources and minimum security practices required. To preserve its core ethos as a free service and commodity, the open-source community cannot impose conditional requirements on its projects. As a collaborative of many volunteer developers, it also struggles to impose requirements on its own contributors. 
Recently, one of the most popular collections of open-source projects, the Python Package Index (PyPI), announced that it will impose minimum security measures on “critical” projects—the top 1 percent of downloaded projects. This comes out to about 3,500 projects and requires that maintainers of those projects secure their accounts with two-factor authentication to continue contributing to the project. This resulted in an outcry from the community—authors of extremely popular projects threatened to abandon their posts, which could potentially break the systems of any end user reliant on that code.
This development provides three lessons. One, the open-source community recognizes the need to raise minimum security standards. Two, the open-source community, no matter how well-intentioned, cannot accomplish that alone. And three, raising the floor on open-source security will be met with pushback and an exodus from the open-source community. This makes the development of an institutional response even more pressing—critical projects need to remain sufficiently resourced and maintained. 
Protecting a Critical Public Asset 
Open source is at least as important to the economy, public services, and national security as proprietary code, but it lacks the same standards and safeguards. It bears the qualities of a public good and is as indispensable as national highways. Given open source’s value as a public asset, an institutional structure must be built that sustains and secures it. 
This is not a novel idea. Open-source code has been called the “roads and bridges” of the current digital infrastructure that warrants the same “focus and funding.” Eric Brewer of Google explicitly called open-source software “critical infrastructure” in a recent keynote at the Open Source Summit in Austin, Texas. Several nations have adopted regulations that recognize open-source projects as significant public assets and central to their most important systems and services. Germany wants to treat open-source software as a public good and launched a sovereign tech fund to support open-source projects “just as much as bridges and roads,” and not just when a bridge collapses. The European Union adopted a formal open-source strategy that encourages it to “explore opportunities for dedicated support services for open source solutions [it] considers critical.” 
Designing an institutional framework that would secure open source requires addressing adverse incentives, ensuring efficient resource allocation, and imposing minimum standards. But not all open-source projects are made equal. The first step is to identify which projects warrant this heightened level of scrutiny—projects that are critical to society. CISA defines critical infrastructure as industry sectors “so vital to the United States that [its] incapacity or destruction would have a debilitating impact on our physical or economic security or public health or safety.” Efforts should target the open-source projects that share those features. 
© 2022 The Lawfare Institute

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NEW YORK–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Today, Paradigm, a leading provider of legal software, has announced its acquisition of LollyLaw, an award-winning cloud-based practice management solution built for immigration law firms. LollyLaw is consistently rated as one of the easiest-to-use legal case management platforms and serves law firms across family and business immigration. Co-founders, John and Todd Levesque join the Paradigm team as Co-General Managers of LollyLaw.

“We are thrilled to welcome LollyLaw to the Paradigm family,” said Colin Li, CFO / CRO of Paradigm. “Our mission is to give attorneys the best-in-class legal software solution for their specialty or other unique needs. With LollyLaw, we can now offer immigration attorneys a single intuitive platform to streamline the major functions of their firm and manage the cumbersome, but ultimately rewarding, immigration process from start to finish.”
Founded in 2014, LollyLaw was designed to simplify the complexities that come with running an immigration firm through:
“We are incredibly excited to partner with the Paradigm team,” said John Levesque. “We want LollyLaw to be in the hands of every immigration firm in the country so it can help as many people as possible during some of their toughest moments. With Paradigm’s industry expertise and resources, we can make this vision a reality.”
“We have been working with immigration firms for over 8 years to build a system tailored to their unique needs,” said Todd Levesque. “With the backing of Paradigm, we can double down on providing our customers with the best possible product and support.”
This is the second major acquisition for Paradigm this year, who announced the acquisition of trust accounting software, TrustBooks, in February 2022.

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Since nobody has an actual scanner anymore, everyone defaults to the next best thing: Snapping and sending a picture with their phone. Of course, if you’re submitting critical work documents, financial information, or schoolwork, those off-centered, shadowy images aren’t very professional.
With iScanner, users have a rock-solid digital tool for turning your favorite iOS device into an all-purpose document scanner. Without all the hardware, iScanner creates high-quality, ready-to-send, and sharable scans of documents, photos, IDs, receipts, and other essential materials, so they’re prepared for use in the digital world.
With iScanner’s AI-enhanced system, users get an ultra-clean, ultra-focused version of the document without blurriness, pixelation, or other image flaws. Whether it’s a JPEG, a PDF, or another file format, iScanner also lets you edit scans like adding e-signatures, then share docs easily via email or your preferred cloud service.
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For office document management, a sheetfed and a flatbed tie the knot
I focus on printer and scanner technology and reviews. I have been writing about computer technology since well before the advent of the internet. I have authored or co-authored 20 books—including titles in the popular Bible, Secrets, and For Dummies series—on digital design and desktop publishing software applications. My published expertise in those areas includes Adobe Acrobat, Adobe Photoshop, and QuarkXPress, as well as prepress imaging technology. (Over my long career, though, I have covered many aspects of IT.)
The Fujitsu fi-8270 is a fast, accurate document scanner for midrange to high-volume loads. A combination of sheetfed and flatbed designs, it packs capable OCR and archiving features, too.
Fujitsu’s Image Scanner fi-8270 ($2,195) plays multiple roles in the company’s business scanner lineup—it’s an update to the fi-7260 that premiered in 2015 and an upgrade from the fi-8170 Color Duplex Document Scanner that won our Editors’ Choice honors in March of this year. It also plays dual roles in your office, as a middle- to high-volume sheetfed document scanner combined with a flatbed scanner. In other words, you get the best of both worlds, scanning multipage documents with a 100-sheet feeder, or putting photos or bound book or magazine pages on the flatbed as needed.
Like the sheetfed fi-8170, the fi-8270 is a fast and accurate scanner with a multitude of high-end features and a highly useful software bundle that manages scanning and document management. We liked most everything about this scanner, barring perhaps its steep price and costly software upgrades; some of its more-than-capable competitors are several hundred dollars cheaper. If price isn’t your company’s top concern, however, the Fujitsu fi-8270 will serve you and your busy enterprise office well.
The fi-8270 is the middle of three new high-volume combination sheetfed/flatbed scanners from Fujitsu. The fi-8250 offers most of the same features for less, but it’s a bit slower, and its daily duty cycle is a couple of thousand pages smaller. The fi-8290, on the other hand, is considerably faster than today’s model, with a duty cycle 3,000 pages higher.
Like the Raven Pro Max, another PCMag favorite that combines that company’s Raven Pro sheetfed document scanner with a flatbed attachment, the fi-8270 teams Fujitsu’s fi-8170 with a flatbed, as you can see in the image below. The combined devices measure 9.2 by 11.8 by 22.7 inches, and the unit weighs just over 19 pounds.
Those specs are similar to those of the Raven Pro Max. Another recent sheetfed/flatbed combo, the HP ScanJet Enterprise Flow N6600 fnw1, is much shorter and leaner, closer in size to lower-end models like Epson’s DS-1630 and PCMag’s Best of 2019 winner the Xerox Duplex Combo Scanner.
As it’s primarily an enterprise or a fleet scanner, you and your team will most likely access the fi-8270 via the company network, though many tasks such as setting up and executing basic scans or selecting workflow profiles can be performed from the device’s control panel. The latter consists of a few buttons and a navigation rocker for scrolling through options on a small display.
And of course, most scans from the flatbed—photos, book pages, fragile documents, or whatever—are usually handled from the control panel.
Multipage documents, whether single- or double-sided, are handled by a 100-page automatic document feeder (ADF), which is the standard for document scanners in this class. The Fujitsu’s recommended daily duty cycle is 10,000 scans, exceeded among the machines mentioned here only by the fi-8290 at 13,000. In any case, as I’ve noted before, reaching the daily limit with a 100-page ADF takes dedication—i.e., loading the feeder at least 100 times. 
The Raven Pro Max’s daily max is 6,000 scans, and both the Epson and Xerox are rated at well under 5,000 scans daily. (They have 50- and 35-page ADFs, respectively.) The HP N6600’s duty cycle is 8,000 scans daily, though that company’s soon-to-be-reviewed ScanJet Pro 3600 offers a 60-page ADF and a 3,000-scan daily limit at a considerably lower price.
At least two of the fi-8270’s more direct competitors, the Raven Pro Max and the HP ScanJet N6600, come with Wi-Fi wireless and Wi-Fi Direct peer-to-peer networking, in addition to Gigabit Ethernet and USB 3.2 connections. This Fujitsu supports only USB and Ethernet, offering little or no support for scanning from handheld smartphones or tablets. The Raven also has an auxiliary USB port for scanning to flash drives and other USB storage devices.
As I said about the fi-8170 a few months ago, Fujitsu reps tell me the company’s high-end business scanners are usually deployed within existing document-management environments and workflows, whose users often already have a software solution in place. If you’re rolling out a new document-archiving system, however, the fi-8270’s bundled PaperStream programs and utilities (and available add-ons) should have everything you need.
The Fujitsu’s long list of apps and utilities includes PaperStream IP Driver (TWAIN x32/x64/ISIS), WIA Driver, Image Scanner Drivers for macOS and Linux, PaperStream Capture, PaperStream ClickScan, Software Operation Panel, Error Recovery Guide, ABBYY FineReader optical character recognition (OCR) for ScanSnap, and Scanner Central Admin. For enterprise-level document management, you can upgrade to PaperStream Capture Pro and PaperStream NX Manager.
Industry-standard TWAIN and ISIS drivers connect the scanner to the many third-party programs (including most Adobe and Microsoft Office apps) that support scanning into them directly. PaperStream Capture is an adroit front-end scanning utility. Fujitsu says PaperStream Capture Pro offers “an efficient yet easy way to convert paper documents into digital files for high-level data indexing and extraction” and charges $470 per seat for it.
Finally, PaperStream NX Manager is a built-in server solution designed to integrate centralized client-server document management systems easily.
Like its flatbed-free sibling the fi-8170, the Fujitsu fi-8270 is rated at a brisk 70 one-sided (simplex) pages per minute (ppm) and 140 two-sided (duplex) images per minute (ipm), where each page side is counted as an image. (This scanner’s humbler and grander siblings, the fi-8250 and fi-8290, are rated at 50ppm/100ipm and 90ppm/180ipm respectively.)
The Raven Pro Max is just a tick slower at 60ppm/120ipm. The HP N6600 is good for 50ppm/100ipm, and Epson’s DS-1630 and Xerox’s Duplex Combo trail at 25ppm/50ipm. 
I tested the fi-8270 via a USB 3.2 connection to our testbed, an Intel Core i5 desktop running Windows 10 Pro and Fujitsu’s PaperStream ClickScan. First, I timed the fi-8270 and its software as it captured both our one-sided 25-sheet and two-sided 25-sheet (50 sides) text documents and converted them to and saved them as image PDF files.
As in all our tests, the Fujitsu performed very closely to its sheetfed sibling the fi-8170. At 72.2ppm and 143.7ipm, the fi-8270 is one of the fastest scanners we’ve seen recently, and certainly the fastest sheetfed/flatbed combo. It beat the Raven Pro Max by about 10ppm and 20ipm and the HP ScanJet N6600 by about 20ppm and 40ipm. The Epson DS-1630 and Xerox Combo finished way back.
Next, I clocked the fi-8270 as it scanned, converted, and saved our two-sided 25-page text document to the more useful searchable PDF format. Like the fi-8170, it captured and saved all 50 sides in an impressive 25 seconds. That beat the HP by 3 seconds and tied the Raven.
To round out my tests, I scanned several colorful business documents, drawings, and other graphics and photos on the flatbed, focusing not on speed but color accuracy and detail. Other than the unavoidable tedium of removing and replacing content on the scanner glass, the flatbed performed fine, reproducing colors accurately with no graininess or loss of detail.
As I’ve said more than once, OCR accuracy is at least as important as raw speed; the fastest scanner on the planet is worthless if you must spend too much time fixing conversion errors. The Fujitsu fi-8270 proved error-free down to 5 points in our Arial font test and 6 points with Times New Roman. That’s superb—and these days, fairly average for professional-grade scanners.
Like most Fujitsu scanners, the fi-8270 comes with everything you need to scan and archive most document types, ranging from business cards with contact information management to financial data such as receipts and invoices. It offers convenient workflow profiles with multiple scanning destinations and a wealth of high-end correction and enhancement features.
The only things that put us off about this scanner are its over-$2,000 list price (though we did find it for $500 to $600 less at some outlets) and the extra cost of Fujitsu’s most advanced document-management software. Even so, the fi-8270 is an excellent product that should, like most Fujitsu document scanners, hold up for years. If your budget allows it, the fi-8270 will not only get the job done, but it will do so elegantly and reliably.
The Fujitsu fi-8270 is a fast, accurate document scanner for midrange to high-volume loads. A combination of sheetfed and flatbed designs, it packs capable OCR and archiving features, too.
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I focus on printer and scanner technology and reviews. I have been writing about computer technology since well before the advent of the internet. I have authored or co-authored 20 books—including titles in the popular Bible, Secrets, and For Dummies series—on digital design and desktop publishing software applications. My published expertise in those areas includes Adobe Acrobat, Adobe Photoshop, and QuarkXPress, as well as prepress imaging technology. (Over my long career, though, I have covered many aspects of IT.)
In addition to writing hundreds of articles for PCMag, over the years I have also written for many other computer and business publications, among them Computer Shopper, Digital Trends, MacUser, PC World, The Wirecutter, and Windows Magazine. I also served as the Printers and Scanners Expert at About.com (now Lifewire).
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signNow vs PandaDoc: Electronic signature software comparison
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PandaDoc and signNow are electronic signature solutions that support the management of electronic documents and contracts. Here’s how to choose which works best for you.
A safe and effective e-signature and document management process is vital for organizations to maintain the safety and efficiency of their operations. Electronic signature solutions like signNow and PandaDoc each provide features designed to simplify users’ electronic signature workflow process. Read on to learn more about these tools and their similar and unique features and capabilities.
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signNow is an e-signature software solution that enables users to manage their document workflows. In addition to electronic signatures, the tool also provides additional features for businesses and organizations, like team collaboration capabilities, court-admissible audit trails, and template editing options.
PandaDoc is a document workflow automation software platform. It comes with features and capabilities to assist users in creating, managing and signing their digital documents. Furthermore, the software supports individual users and organizations with signature workflows, automated actions, customizable document creation features, and approval process solutions.
signNow provides customizable documents and templates for its users. Organizations can create their own templates of commonly used documents so that staff members can use them for fast and easy document completion. Users can generate the templates within the platform or import them from Word documents. This way, similar documents will not need to be reuploaded into signNow each time. Instead, a fresh copy will always exist, stored within the platform. Users can also create Document Group Templates. These are document templates merged into a group that can be reused as necessary and convenient for multiparty electronic signing.
PandaDoc enables users to choose between more than 750 document creation templates that exist on the platform. These preexisting templates exist for many common business purposes within various industries. Users may then customize the template they choose to suit their needs by adding variables within the document body. PandaDoc users can also create their own custom documents online and utilize them within the platform by integrating popular third-party tools like Microsoft Office, Hubspot, Google Drive and more.
signNow connects different members within an organization to work together through their collaboration features. Users can create teams of designated individuals, enabling them to easily share documents and templates through the team’s shared folder. Shared templates are also beneficial for collaborating with other staff, as members can upload these templates into the team’s shared folder for easy access. signNow also provides features and capabilities for organization leaders to manage their members’ accounts. Once leaders log in as admins or moderators in the system, they can create their organization, dedicate membership roles and manage their staff’s access to the organization within the platform.
PandaDoc helps team members collaborate on document-related work processes. Users can easily invite new members to their workspace by sending an invite link. Once another member becomes part of your workplace and team, you can edit documents simultaneously in real-time or reassign document ownership to them entirely. Authorized members can also create approval workflows to streamline collaboration in the system. The chat feature enables users to send private messages to each other for easy communication. The comment feature lets them share their thoughts directly on documents within the platform. This way, team members and stakeholders can collaborate on creating important documents. The system even provides a way to store contacts for easy access, sharing documents, or populating recipient information.
signNow offers more than 270 integrations with popular business apps, CRM and ERP systems, cloud storage platforms and more.
signNow helps users get more from their e-signing solution through built-in integrations with third-party tools. With the Salesforce integration, users can manage the life cycles of their contracts within Salesforce. The Microsoft Dynamics integration enables leaders to gain more data for team reporting and tracking team progress on tasks and projects. The BIM 360 connection accelerates construction projects with the signNow e-signature capabilities. The Box integration is helpful for document management, and the Dynamics 365 connection provides data for prefilling documents and updating records. Gmail users can quickly and easily send email attachments for signature. Finally, the signNow API allows users to manage their eSignature workflows based on the needs of their organization.
PandaDoc has native integrations and connectors with many other third-party solutions. It lets users connect their platform capabilities with productivity tools like Slack, Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Google Workspace and other solutions for easy collaboration on documents. CRM tools like monday work management, Omniscient, Salesmate and more can help update and streamline sales workflows. Storage integrations with tools like Microsoft OneDrive use automation to back up your documentation and enable easy document and template access. The tool also integrates with Canva for incorporating media and design features within documents, single sign-on for simplifying login management, various payment solutions for requesting and collecting electronic payments through sales documents, and many more interesting integration options. PandaDoc’s built-in integration features provide a wide range of capabilities to users. It also connects with Zapier Connectors and Integromat to enable users to create integrated workflows. The PandaDoc API may also be helpful for users who wish to enhance their document capabilities with automation.
signNow’s API is great for users who wish to create and customize eSignature workflows for their organization. Users can utilize the SignNow API to set up their documents with custom branding, templates and field options. They can then organize their documents into groups to send out to signers.
The signNow API also enables users to perform bulk signing, share files and generate signing links. Documents can be embedded for easy signing and sending on websites and apps, and users can collect payments by adding payment fields to their documents. The API is mobile-friendly, simplifying on-the-go e-signing processes.
Developers can use the PandaDoc API to build automated documentation and e-signature features. The PandaDoc API uses standard HTTP response codes, authentication and verbs, and resource-oriented URLs. Users can automate their documents workflow to create documents from templates and files, list and filter their documentation resources, and update and delete their documents or templates.
Through the PandaDoc API, users can also share documents via emails, links, embeds and downloads, link documents to CRMs and manage their folders. Using Webhooks and the PandaDoc API together allows users to subscribe to document events. The API enables users to access log details and manage their workspace members.
signNow and PandaDoc are two robust solutions for e-signature and document management. Considering your organization’s current needs and solutions is helpful when choosing the best software option for your organization. For example, an organization that uses e-signature documents for multiple purposes may benefit from signNow’s collaboration features which allow users to organize documentation among teams within shared folders. However, PandaDoc’s wide range of integration options may be best for an organization that already uses or plans to use one of those third-party solutions. By considering these aspects, you can get a better idea of which solution has features that would be more beneficial to your organization’s needs.
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signNow vs PandaDoc: Electronic signature software comparison
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