News | January 7, 2008

ManTech Introduces Document Detective Version 3.0 Providing Enhanced Protection For Classified Documents

Fairfax, VA - ManTech International Corporation announced recently the release of Document Detective 3.0 Government Edition, an electronic document security tool that prevents the disclosure of hidden data in classified documents. This new version of Document Detective finds more hidden data and it includes an expanded ability to detect obscure text and more tests to check for hidden data created by the ‘paste' and ‘paste special' functions in Microsoft Office files.

ManTech's Document Detective 3.0 Government Edition identifies and removes more than 100 types of hidden and meta data, including embedded objects, Object Linking and Embedding (OLE) files, Portable Document Format (PDF) files, Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) and Extensible Markup Language (XML), and comments and tracked changes in Microsoft's PowerPoint, Excel and Word documents. It also discovers and removes object fragments, which are created when an application fails to remove deleted information from the document. This data is often invisible to the human eye but can be easily located with Document Detective. Document Detective was specifically engineered to process classified documents and it meets the governments most stringent compliance requirements to provide 100 percent ‘reliable human review.'

There have been numerous, well-documented accidental releases of proprietary and embarrassing information in recent years by government and other officials. A United Nations report on the assassination of the prime minister of Lebanon was published online and journalists discovered that by turning on the ‘track changes' function they could see earlier versions of the documents which revealed suspects in the assassination, not disclosed in the final version. If the report had been scanned with Document Detective before its release, the suspect's names and other supposedly hidden data could have been identified and removed.

In addition to its inclusion on the Defense Security Services trusted downloading product's list, a beta version of Document Detective was tested by the Defense Intelligence Agency in January 2005 which concluded that, "no product currently meets the specific requirements tailored for the DOD community as well as Document Detective." In a product review by the trade publication Government Computer News in April 2006, Document Detective received an ‘A' rating for performance, ease of use, features and value.

"Document Detective is the leading deep inspection and cleansing tool available, and it outperforms other products in its ability to find and remove hidden data," said Joseph L. Bergantz, Vice President and General Manager, ManTech SRS Technologies, Inc. "Document Detective was developed to help the average user locate and remove hidden data that is frequently contained within electronic documents. We have been studying the problem of hidden data in electronic documents for more than five years and Document Detective 3.0 reflects that research and the feedback we have received from government and other users."

ManTech's Document Detective Version 3.0 Government Edition converts the content control tools that integrate Document Detective with Microsoft Office from macro plug-ins into compiled dynamic link libraries for stability and speed. ManTech also added a keyword list utility to make importing text files and merging existing keyword lists easier.

Another new feature is the Document Summary Checklist that displays a list of potential security problems, making it even easier to locate and fix security problems in electronic documents. Document Detective 3.0 also includes an expanded, built-in, computer-based training program with six new lessons.

SOURCE: ManTech International Corporation