[Design] Multilingualism and security design requests

[Edmund Lian]

On 03/07/2003 01:32:21 PM Kaitlin wrote:

>We have already started talking about localization and
>internationalization.  That's important to us.

Great!

>>(2) Some means of encrypting and "time-bombing" local replicas of
>>databases.
>>
>This is the first time I've heard of this idea, but it sounds interesting.

This is a wish derived from a real need. In many companies like ours,
competitive advantage is not derived from products, but from contacts,
information, etc. Without this kind of security, when an employee jumps to
a competitor (as one of ours did recently), they might be able to take with
them everything unless we can control the information and have it
automatically self-destruct, or else become unreadable.

It's true that staff could take screenshots, photocopy information, etc.,
but these are all much harder to hide, and when huge amounts of information
are involved, becomes impractical. It's like anything else in life--there's
almost always a way to bypass security, but why make it any easier than you
have to?

...Edmund.