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At Virtru, we believe that the ability to securely share data is essential — and that privacy is a human right that must be protected. It’s a mission we have stuck by since we started in 2011, and sees us supporting over 7,000 organisations worldwide to protect their most valuable asset, their data, with Zero-Trust security and powerful, granular policy controls that tie identity to data, everywhere it moves.
Now, Virtru is giving developers a new way to build security directly into their own applications. Our new open source project, OpenTDF, enables developers to build Zero Trust data controls directly into the apps they create. Developers can access the OpenTDF project on GitHub.
OpenTDF is a versatile security toolkit that can be used to govern sensitive data as it flows through documents, IoT sensors, video feeds, and multi-party analytics. Examples of how developers can leverage OpenTDF include:
OpenTDF is based on the Trusted Data Format (TDF), created by Virtru’s Co-Founder and CTO, Will Ackerly. TDF has long been an open spec for secure data sharing in the intelligence community, and the release of OpenTDF makes key capabilities of TDF more accessible to developers across public and private sectors, equipping them to build security and privacy into their applications from the ground up.
“Just as PDF helped accelerate digital document sharing, TDF is poised to become the standard method for securely sharing sensitive data. TDF keeps rightful owners in sovereign control of information they share regardless of file type, application of origin, or authentication mechanisms.” Will Ackerly, CTO and Co-Founder of Virtru.
We look forward to seeing what you create with OpenTDF. You can learn more about OpenTDF here. To start building, access our GitHub repo here.
Tags: cyber security, cybersecurity, open source, open-source, opentdf, security, tdf, trusted data format, virtru, zero trust, zero-trust

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The rise in remote workforces has prompted many organizations to search for a viable document management system.
But to justify its adoption, an organization must study the DMS tools and ensure that they meet the organization’s needs. With more options becoming available due to improved technology and awareness, it can be difficult to know what to look for.
Document management systems help teams go beyond the limits of paper-based workflows to bring all their business systems online. They also provide a more structured alternative to simple file management systems that improve security, sharing and connectivity across workflows and applications.
A document is the universal API of business information exchange. Every business document, including invoices, contracts, bills of materials and purchase orders, is packaged into universal-sized pieces of paper. Document management systems bring order and consistency to these manual processes.
The need of every enterprise is different. Smaller companies might appreciate the opportunity to digitize manual and physical processes. Larger firms may appreciate new capabilities for integrating document data across various customer, financial, legal and compliance workflows more efficiently and with a higher level of granularity. And these more sophisticated capabilities are becoming more accessible and cost-effective thanks to improvements in AI, robotic process automation (RPA) and the cloud.
A document management system is a critical step in automating business processes. Timeshatter, a timeshare negotiations consultancy, turned to a document management system to improve complex workflows around timeshare contracts.
Implementing a document management system helped eliminate human error, according to Timeshatter CEO Brian Donovan. It also improved access and reduced the time spent ruffling through filing cabinets to find documents.
Companies with a high volume of critical documents will likely see the most significant gains from deploying a DMS platform.
Ephesoft, an intelligent document management system vendor, sees significant adoption among financial services companies, healthcare organizations, government agencies, education institutions and manufacturing firms, according to Dave Beery, data science team lead at the company.
Intelligent document processing (IDP) is an emerging capability for further automating DMS capabilities. Key IDP enhancements apply optical character recognition to identify text, AI to interpret the layout and meaning of the text and RPA to automate document workflows. Along with that, the cloud improves document workflows and data exchange with other applications through more sophisticated APIs.
The combination of IDP and cloud can help organizations build more sophisticated AI and machine learning models. For example, financial companies can use IDP to automatically extract more granular data from bank statements, pay stubs, tax documents and other essential documents. This capability leads to more accurate models to predict credit risks, identify fraud and improve planning, said Sam Bobley, CEO and co-founder of Ocrolus, a financial document automation platform.
It is important to look for certain document management system tools to determine if a platform is the right choice.
Cloud access is crucial because it allows users to access all documents from any device. It also helps mitigate the risk that data cannot be lost or deleted, while permissions are a great way to enable and restrict document access to different people.
It is vital to ensure various ways to bring documents into the platform, said Eric McGee, senior network engineer at TRG Datacenters. It’s best to ensure that a document management system allows for documents’ input through different sources such as email, scanners, apps and bulk uploads, he said. And if it’s an essential source in an organization, the organization should investigate how seamlessly it works with the necessary workflows. For example, does email upload require an extra step, or could the accounts receivable team kick off an invoice payment process with a single click, or better yet, no clicks?
Document version control features can help teams coordinate changes for communicating about complex products, particularly in manufacturing, said Maximilian zur Muehlen, business strategy manager at VEM Tooling Group, an injection molding company in China. For example, teams may work on different documents, such as a bill of material or a procurement request. Robust version control features have helped zur Muehlen’s team identify and avoid communication hiccups when documents get out of step.
Security should be a top priority in any newly integrated software or technology. Things to look for include in-transit and at-rest encryption, support for role-based access, comprehensive audit trails and revision indexing abilities. These are all valuable for their own sake and to simplify compliance.
The more documents users add to the database, the more complex, in theory, it becomes to manage. Pay close attention to the tagging, rating and other categorization capabilities as these will help users locate the necessary files more efficiently.
Research the tools’ advanced document indexing capabilities. Proper document indexing improves document retrieval, access controls and reporting. Some of the most popular DMS document indexing features include metadata indexing, content recognition and indexing, version and revision indexing and automatic document numbering.
Tightly regulated firms may also want to consider pull printing support, which keeps documents from printing until users have authenticated themselves at the device, suggested Bob Burnett, director of B2B solutions deployment and planning for Brother International Corporation. This protects documents from being taken by unauthorized personnel and can help avoid large crowds around the machine, aiding employees in feeling more comfortable being back in the office after the pandemic.
RPA can help automate DMS workflows, but someone has to create the RPA bots manually. Hyper-automation is an emerging capability for automating the process of creating automation. Look for human-in-the-loop capabilities that can “watch” how people process documents. This can accelerate efforts to combine the benefits of AI, RPA and cloud initiatives, Bobley said.
The top 5 content management trends in 2022
E-Handbook: Automated document management system tools transform workflows
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Advanced technologies, e-signature proliferation and COVID-19’s impact are speeding the transformation from paper-based to automated document management processes.
With numerous options to choose from, picking the right document management system for your organization depends on a careful examination of its tools and features.
Companies in the throes of digital transformation find the e-signature process to be a major catalyst in automating their document management systems and smoothing workflows.
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OpenText added more features to its Cloud Editions 21.4 fourth-quarter update. With the planned acquisition of Dallas-based email encryption company Zix for $860 million cash, email security features may soon follow.
OpenText does not have email encryption across its wide portfolio of enterprise content management, document security and process automation tools and applications, so Zix fills a gap. The deal is expected to close within 90 days.
“When we announce the closing of the acquisition, we will very quickly come up with plans for how we’d integrate and which areas it supports,” said Muhi Majzoub, OpenText executive vice president and chief product officer. “When the acquisition closes and this product becomes part of the OpenText portfolio, it will be a new product that we could integrate into many areas, including threat intelligence and document management.”
Tech acquisition prices have gone sky-high since last year as stock prices soar and many companies are flush with cash. Recent deals in the customer experience industry, for example, include Slack (almost $28 billion), SurveyMonkey ($4 billion) and MailChimp ($12 billion). In comparison, Zix is a “good deal,” said Deep Analysis founder Alan Pelz-Sharpe, probably in part because the email encryption company that caters to small and medium-sized businesses wasn’t profitable. OpenText must take on Zix’s estimated $200 million debt.
The Zix acquisition, Pelz-Sharpe predicted, will slot right into the OpenText product universe and fill an immediate need for its customers, some of which are large enterprises who didn’t support full-time remote workers before 2020.
“They have a lot of customers that maybe didn’t allow remote work before and sent their employees home,” Pelz-Sharpe said. “Suddenly, there’s a need among a mass of OpenText customers to employ email encryption.”
While OpenText released numerous Cloud Editions 21.4 features last month, more will be revealed on Tuesday at the company’s OpenText World virtual user conference. Among them is an integration with Google Marketing Platform, mostly an advertising and analytics cloud, to enable media management and high-volume email campaigns. OpenText has integrated its customer data platform with Google Marketing Platform, as well as its TeamSite web content management platform. This release is the latest in a years-long partnership between OpenText and Google Cloud that started in 2019.
Also new to OpenText Cloud Editions are developer tools for the OpenText Developer Cloud, which include API services and new consumption-pricing models as well as an improved developer site that consolidates available services that previously were spread across many sites.
Developers, Majzoub said, typically build apps that are connectors between OpenText applications and other applications on their networks to automate workflows. Increasingly, however, they’re building apps to tap into OpenText content services such as data security, document scanning or Intelligent Capture, which applies optical character recognition and machine learning classification to document ingestion processes.
Also new to Cloud Editions is an integration between Microsoft Office 365 and OpenText Core Content, a OneDrive and Box document cloud competitor. Pelz-Sharpe said that while Microsoft tries to induce Office365 users to store their files in OneDrive, many organizations whose enterprise content operations are built on OpenText or its competitors will never rip and replace massive online document repositories with OneDrive, so Microsoft must give its customers what they need: flexibility to save content where they want it, where they’ve set up their compliance and security workflows.
“Based on feedback that I’ve heard from [our] customers, they have been telling Microsoft that they don’t want the content always stored in a Microsoft system,” Majzoub said. “Their content strategy is to store in content suite in [OpenText] Documentum and Core Content. They want to keep that strategy, they want to drive it for the whole enterprise, and they don’t want to be forced to store the content in OneDrive or SharePoint.”
Don Fluckinger covers enterprise content management, CRM, marketing automation, e-commerce, customer service and enabling technologies for TechTarget.
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More than 50 vendors promote platforms as Microsoft SharePoint alternatives, so organizations that want to move away from Microsoft have myriad options.
SharePoint is a content management system (CMS), collaboration suite, web application platform and social network. While it is economical and offers much functionality, its on-premises version doesn’t easily migrate to its online counterpart. Customizations often don’t work, and federal compliance issues can prevent a full cloud migration. Organizations that wish to move away from SharePoint must first choose which functionality they need most, including collaboration, content management and in-house apps.
Explore seven of the top Microsoft SharePoint alternatives.
A Java-based Atlassian product, Confluence is a collaboration software that includes shared document editing capabilities — some versions have a comment function — and syncs content with mobile devices. Confluence includes team spaces, which enable small groups to collaborate, with shared calendars, workflow and task management functionality. Many user reviews also rank Confluence’s search engine highly. This product is compliant with GDPR, ISO 27001/27018 and VPAT.
Confluence offers three pricing tiers: Free, Standard and Premium. The first is free for up to 10 users per month, while Standard and Premium start at $5.50 and $10.50 per user, per month respectively.
Huddle is another collaboration software that features Microsoft 365 compatibility and direct access to edit files without the need to download then reupload them. Users can customize Huddle’s workspace and enable or disable work tabs, apply themes and add branding.
Huddle features a task monitor that can track progress in real time and includes version control capabilities, social collaboration and a content dashboard that learns user content preferences. Huddle is compliance-friendly, adhering to ISO 27001, FedRAMP and GDPR.
Huddle offers two subscription tiers: Huddle Plus — for smaller organizations with a minimum of 25 users — and Huddle Premier, for larger enterprises with a minimum of 100 users. Pricing is available upon request.
Glasscubes can benefit organizations that prioritize team collaboration, as it enables remote participation and collaboration with external partners. Users have said the UI is clear, accessible and easy to use. Glasscubes includes document management and review functionality, as well as reporting and statistics.
Due to its simplicity, it may not suit businesses with advanced requirements, like process approval, compliance management and third-party integration.
Glasscubes offers monthly and annual billing, separated into three tiers — Enterprise, Workgroup and Team — the lowest of which starts at $35 per month for five users automatically, with the option to add users for $3.75 per month individually.
Workspace — formerly G Suite — includes Google’s many collaboration and content management tools, like Hangouts, Calendar, Drive, Docs and Sheets. It encourages collaboration between participants in different locations, aims to increase employee efficiency and is easy to use.
After its rebranding to Workspace in 2020, Google has added cloud security features like client-side encryption, data loss prevention and labels for sensitive content. Many Workspace apps can also integrate with third-party security tools.
Workspace offers four pricing tiers, starting at $6 per user, per month. The tiers are Business Starter, Business Standard, Business Plus and Enterprise.
Samepage collaboration software — dubbed eStudio — emphasizes team communication and project management. Its management functionalities include task lists and agendas, file sharing that resembles Dropbox, chat and instant messaging.
The Samepage UI is simple, and all communications happen on a single page. It also has an API for expanded custom functionality, activity tracking, action item tracking, configurable notifications and automated scheduling.
Samepage offers five pricing tiers, starting at $39 per month for five users. The tiers are Mini, Seven, Pro, Plus and eXtreme.
Box is a cloud CMS that includes collaboration features for document group editing and approval workflows. It also has a project management toolkit that features central workspaces, task lists, project tracking and secure file sharing.
Box has various integrations with Salesforce, Microsoft and other business apps. Users can share links with other Box users to simplify collaboration. It offers mobile synchronization, security and device management. It is also compliant with ISO 27001/27018, HIPAA, the HITECH Act, GDPR and FINRA.
Box offers four pricing tiers on monthly or annual bases, starting at $15 per user, per month on the annual plan. The tiers are Business, Business Plus, Enterprise and Enterprise Plus.
Basecamp offers remote project management, has a user-friendly interface and can integrate with other business apps. The system’s content management features suit most business environments, and file management is drag-and-drop simple. Its chat functionality lets users communicate and discuss individual documents within the content, like SharePoint’s conversation capabilities. Users can configure collaboration workspaces and extend access to external partners with Basecamp.
As a collaboration tool, Basecamp can foster strong team communication. However, it does not include its own time tracking capabilities, so it may not benefit organizations that require full project management capabilities.
Basecamp offers two pricing tiers for personal and business use. Basecamp Business starts at $99 per month.
When Microsoft announced the end of SharePoint 2016, many experts assumed the vendor would permanently sunset the product after nearly 20 years. Yet, SharePoint has resurged. Microsoft infused it with new automation and custom app features that bridged it into the current Microsoft Azure tool set, which has increased its popularity.
Still, organizations may choose not to use SharePoint or prefer an alternative. Some reasons to choose a SharePoint alternative include the following:
Currently, cloud storage rules. Many organizations still rely on on-premises content storage, but communication tools that aren’t cloud-based are almost extinct.
A worthy SharePoint alternative should also have strong integration — like out-of-the-box APIs — with a broad range of other cloud platforms, including Azure, and adherence to a respectable range of compliance standards.
Finally, organizations should consider a platform’s tracking tools for collaborative work or document routing. As businesses rapidly automate processes, tracking tools become essential. Any organization that isn’t yet using them likely will soon.
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The e-signature software market took flight before the COVID-19 pandemic, but global shutdowns cemented its usefulness and convenience.
The Electronic Signatures in Global and National Commerce, or ESIGN, Act in 2000 set e-signature’s legal requirements. Before 2020, many businesses used e-signature software at least once per month. Then, remote work brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the adoption and use of e-signature software, and experts expect the market to grow more over the next decade.
E-signature software offers various benefits for organizations, like improved performance and reduced costs. Paper usage also decreases, which is better for the environment, and e-signatures offer convenience and avoid having users print out, sign, scan and mail documents.
However, not all e-signature software is the same. As organizations evaluate options, they should consider how they’ll use the software, its integrations and whether it offers a mobile app, which can be essential for consumer-facing businesses. Organizations should also examine contract and document templates that require signatures, as well as their signing processes.
Six e-signature software products stood out in the market after examining several professional and user reviews. Explore their standout features, their challenges, who they work best for and pricing information.
As a Dropbox company, HelloSign can neatly integrate into Dropbox. It can also integrate with Salesforce to make it easier to sign proposals and contracts, as well as HubSpot, Google Workspace, Slack and Microsoft SharePoint, among other tools.
HelloSign enables users to embed e-signatures into websites or apps using APIs and can automate employee onboarding and hiring processes. It includes templates and bulk send features to more easily collect signatures.
The software stores and organizes documents after signing and offers templates that users can reuse. The platform is mobile-friendly, with notification and reminder options. Yet, some challenges include the UI, customer service and lacking direct integration with Microsoft Word.
The HelloSign Essentials plan — designed for individuals — starts at $15 per month. The Standard version, geared toward teams, starts at $25 per user per month.
As part of DocuSign Agreement Cloud, a contract lifecycle management system, DocuSign gears its e-signature software toward companies that handle a lot of contracts. The software has a mobile-responsive web app to simplify how parties sign agreements, supports document routing to multiple parties and lets users create reusable templates with standard and customizable fields.
DocuSign uses APIs to integrate with over 350 apps, including Microsoft Office, Salesforce, Zoom, SAP, Google and Oracle products. The platform is user-friendly, offers multilanguage support and enables visibility into who views and signs documents. Still, users can’t download multiple documents at once with this software, and it can’t integrate with other PDF apps.
DocuSign pricing starts at $10 per month for the Personal plan and $25 per user per month for the Standard plan.
Most Adobe Acrobat users are familiar with its e-signature capabilities, but full access to those features requires a software purchase. Adobe Sign lets recipients sign documents without downloading anything. Like other e-signature platforms, Adobe Sign integrates with a variety of tools, including Salesforce, Zoho CRM, SAP SuccessFactors, Microsoft apps and Box, among others.
Users can create digital forms on their websites and integrate Adobe Sign for signatures. The software also offers a mobile app to scan and upload PDFs, along with customizable templates, notifications and reminders. Adobe Sign is easy to use, has responsive customer support and simplifies how users upload a signature.
However, the mobile app can be clunky, and its features can overwhelm some users — making Adobe Sign a better choice for enterprise customers. It also lacks integration capabilities beyond its existing choices.
Adobe Sign’s pricing for teams starts at $14.99 per user per month.
As a private cloud e-signature software provider, SignNow enables users to add e-signatures to various forms, documents and templates, including PDFs, Word documents and contracts. The software uses APIs for integration to websites, CRM systems and other apps.
SignNow enables conditional documents, which means organizations can set documents to route by role. It also enables team collaboration to create documents and templates and lets users add custom branding to documents. The platform is easy to use and supports e-signature management for multiple documents. It’s also easy to sign documents from mobile phones.
Yet, the software presents challenges. The documents don’t open immediately and instead prompt the recipient to download the file. It also lacks a commenting feature for users to provide feedback before signing.
SignNow’s pricing starts at $8 per user per month.
Organizations looking for e-signature software with a lot of features may consider PandaDoc. It offers a mobile app so users can track documents’ statuses and get notified when someone opens, views, comments on or signs a document. The software also offers a template library with over 450 contract, proposal and invoice templates, and users can drag and drop elements into documents to create their own templates.
The PandaDoc API lets users integrate with third-party apps, and users can add it to PDFs and Word documents. It offers pre-built integrations with apps like Salesforce, Zapier, Zoho, HubSpot and Dropbox.
The software is easy to use, especially for creating documents. However, the signing space is small and may benefit from more out-of-the-box integrations.
PandaDoc offers a free e-signature package that lets users upload, send and collect payment for unlimited documents. Paid plans start at $19 per user per month and include templates, document editors and analytics.
Like its counterparts, ReadySign’s e-signature software includes customizable templates and forms. It can also create an AnySign link, which lets signers opt in to sign the forms they need. Other features include bulk sending, notifications, reminders, custom signatures, document management to organize signed forms and user management with role-based permissions.
ReadySign is easy to use, cost-effective, enables a comprehensive audit trail and offers responsive customer service. However, controlling the reminders can cause challenges, and the search features are not easy to use. Also, the vendor’s website lacks integration information.
ReadySign’s pricing starts at $25 per user per month for 10 users. The 40-user plan is $10 per user per month, and the 100-user plan is $6 per user per month.
Part of: Nail down the basics of e-signatures
Many people think e-signature and digital signature are interchangeable terms, but an electronic signature differs from a digital one in critical ways.
Electronic signatures are quick, secure and can support hybrid and distributed workforces, but not everyone trusts or has access to e-signature technology.
In 2020, remote work fast-tracked many digital initiatives, including electronically signing legal documents. But e-signatures’ legal background goes beyond the pandemic.
E-signature software can reduce paper costs and improve productivity across departments. Organizations can explore the following six software options to fit their business needs.
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Signing out of account, Standby…
You’re not in business to do bookkeeping, but you’re not in business without it, either.
As a small business, you don’t want multiple systems taking care of your bookkeeping, invoicing and financial documents. Perhaps you create your invoices in spreadsheets or word-processing documents, eyeball expenses in online banking and maintain your employee records in an HR folder in the cloud. Some data may be in a file hosting service, while others are password-protected locally on your computer.
It can be confusing to others who may need to work with those documents — and for you to lose track of what is where. When you need that information come tax time or for a loan application, you may need to reference those scattered documents. That can take forever to find, and there’s a real risk of losing data or even using the wrong data.
If you’ve yet to encounter any serious errors or problems handling your own bookkeeping, you may be tempted to maintain the status quo. However, your financial organization needs will continue to grow more complicated as time passes. Your business may grow wildly, multiplying the number of things to track and complicating your routine. Or, if you haven’t been paying much attention to bookkeeping, you’re probably tempting fate.
Related: Five Bookkeeping Tips for Business Owners
To address your needs, you could hire a bookkeeper to organize and track all of your business finances. You could also hire an accountant to organize and track your business recordkeeping.
Or you could have all your files, invoices, transactions, bank accounts, customer payments and credit cards flow into one easy-to-use financial management system. Such a system saves time by automatically parsing through your documents or receipts. You can scan and upload everything to a central digital location, capturing essential information without ever having to think about it. No spreadsheet does that on its own. Such a system would be automatic and uncomplicated, instantly searchable on all content and would make it easy to analyze information and make decisions based on that analysis.
Gartner, a technology research and consulting firm, examined process automation in accounting and discovered that 89% of general accounting tasks were highly automatable.
Such a system would organize your data while reducing or eliminating the time you spend manually entering data. It would make it easy to identify discrepancies in your records without annoying and time-consuming searches in physical files and journals, spreadsheets, documents and boxes of receipts. Most importantly, you’d have a clear picture of your business — and financial control while spending the least amount of your time bookkeeping.
Several providers offer automated solutions for financial management, available for both desktops and mobile apps. They simplify the process of organizing and automating your small business bookkeeping, including invoicing and document management.
Look for cloud storage for your financial documents, which reduces clutter while boosting efficiency. It’s especially helpful when files can be scanned or captured on a mobile device and uploaded to the cloud.
There, the documents are processed and reconciled, and you can even generate reports instantly.
Related: How Entrepreneurs Can Manage Their Business Finances With Success
Automated invoicing that creates and tracks your branded invoices and receives payments is another capability that should be of interest to you. Offering your customers electronic payment options speed your time to cash significantly with no more trips to the mailbox or bank branch. And, if you link to your bank account and credit cards, your transactions populate seamlessly while providing you reports on money in and money out.
Some platforms offer bank-level security, as well, with all data encrypted in transit and stored in secure databases. Another great feature you can find with financial management software is the ability to securely share files and comment on documents with the accountant who does your taxes without the need for large email attachments.
When selecting a financial management platform, look for one whose all-in-one solutions for small teams and sole proprietors don’t require extensive accounting knowledge. Live customer support and setup assistance would be a great plus, too. You and your employees will save time and energy while automating the production of critical financial documents that require analysis like P&Ls, cash flow statements, balance sheets, and expense reports. If the platform enables your data to be searched, having all your data quickly accessible and generating automated reports will mean you’ll spend less time entering data or running down receipts, invoices, and bank statements, and more time growing your business.
In the end, one solution — without spreadsheets and accordion files — means that you can spend less time managing your books. You’re not in business to do bookkeeping, but you’re not in business without bookkeeping.
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Records management (RM) is the supervision and administration of digital or paper records, regardless of format.
Records management activities include the creation, receipt, maintenance, use and disposal of records. In this context, a record is content that documents a business transaction. Documentation may exist in contracts, memos, paper files, electronic files, reports, emails, videos, instant message logs or database records. Paper records may be stored in physical boxes on-premises or at a storage facility. Digital records may be stored on storage media in-house or in the cloud.
The goal of records management is to help an organization keep the necessary documentation accessible for both business operations and compliance audits. In some small to mid-sized businesses, spreadsheets are used to track where records are stored, but larger organizations may find records management software suites that are tied to both a taxonomy and a records retention schedule to be more useful. Such software suites may be marketed as enterprise information management (EIM) products that are capable of helping an organization to manage both records and ordinary content.
See also: records information management, spreadmart
 
 
 
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