Excerpts from How to Prevent Your Public PDFs from Leaking Confidential Information

In this episode of the Perspectives podcast, sponsored by ABBYY and hosted on Law.com, we’ll hear highlights from the May 12th presentation, How to Prevent Your Public PDFs from Leaking Confidential Information.

A recent ground-breaking survey by UpGuard shows far too many organizations are posting public PDF documents that contain dangerous metadata. Metadata that could disclose confidential information. You may be revealing  legal and accounting “supply chains” of document creation, which could then be used for precise spear-phishing attacks. Additionally, metadata in PDFs filed with the court, or sent to the other side, can be used as evidence against your client. However, you still need to have metadata in your PDFs to make them searchable.

Greg Pollock, VP of Product Cyber Research at UpGuard; Michael Simon, Principal, Seventh Samurai, LLC Consulting and Rebecca Rakoski, Esquire, Managing Partner at Xpan Law Partners. The speakers in this  to learn how to navigate dangerous metadata and protect your organization. Securing searchable PDFs can slash the manual work needed and response time to deal with Data Subject Access Requests (DSARs) under the GDPR, CCPA or other emerging laws. Understand how proper creation and management of PDFs:

The full on-demand webcast can be found here: https://www.law.com/2021/04/26/how-to-prevent-your-public-pdfs-from-leaking-confidential-information/

Greg Pollock | VP of Product Cyber Research | UpGuard

Greg Pollock is the VP of Product, Cyber Research for UpGuard. In his role at UpGuard, Greg oversees the execution of the CyberResearch product, managing the strategy, roadmap, and team dedicated to the success of this product. Greg has worked in product management roles at a variety of technology companies including Gaia Interactive and Shmoop, managing teams responsible for communicating clear requirements to Design, Engineering, and Marketing for the successful execution of product development. In addition to his experience in product, Greg is also an experienced data breach researcher and a member of UpGuard’s Cyber Risk Research Team. His team’s research has been featured in publications such as The Washington Post, The New York Times, Forbes, CNN, and Bloomberg. Greg received his Bachelor of Arts in English from James Madison University and Masters in Literature from UC, Santa Cruz.

Michael Simon | Principal | Seventh Samurai, LLC Consulting

Michael Simon is the Principal of Seventh Samurai, LLC consulting, where he helps law firms, legal departments and government agencies manage their eDiscovery, Privacy and Information Governance issues.  He is also a licensed attorney, with XPAN Law Partners, a boutique Domestic and International Cybersecurity and Data Privacy Law Firm.  Michael has been an adjunct professor at Michigan State University College of Law and Boston University School of Law, teaching classes on eDiscovery law and practice.  He has made over 100 presentations as speaker, panelist and moderator and written dozens of articles on eDiscovery, Privacy, AI ethics and governance, and legal technology, including most recently as the lead author of Lola v. Skadden and the Automation of the Legal Profession, Simon, Lindsay, Sosa, Comparato, 20 Yale J.L. & Tech. 234 (2018).

Rebecca L. Rakoski, Esquire | Managing Partner | XPan Law Partners

Rebecca L. Rakoski is the co-founder and managing partner at XPAN Law Partners. Rebecca counsels and defends public and private corporations, and their boards, during data breaches and responds to state/federal regulatory compliance and enforcement actions. As an experienced litigator, Rebecca has handled hundreds of matters in state and federal courts. Rebecca skillfully manages the intersection of state, federal, and international regulations that affect the transfer, storage, and collection of data to aggressively mitigate her client’s litigation risks.