Cocoon Data: Securing Internet communication

which was the cause of the injection, is fixed by Google.

The technique used in this example is known as Cross-site request forgery, or simply put CSRF.

Securing Internet communication
All sorts of information sent via the Internet are subject to interception and misuse. Cocoon Data has identified the eHealth, legal, banking, defense and security and the media and entertainment sectors as most in need of e-document protection.

Hacker and content and identity thieves are not the only ones compromising e-mail traffic. Governments are also actively intruding into e-mail privacy. In the United States, for instance, e-mail communication lose their status as protected communication under the Electronic Communications Privacy Act after 180 days — after which such communication becomes just another database record. After the passage of the Patriot Act, even this protection is unclear. Collusion between security agencies and providers has been in the news regularly over the past number of years. Other countries tend to have even less legal protection and - as noted above — server data is located worldwide.

Cocoon Data saw the contradiction in the inherent insecurity of the Internet and the need for the protection of private property that is fundamental to our economic system. It rightly recognizes the materials and communications sent over the Internet to be the private property of its creators/senders. Thinking about the problem led the Cocoon Data developers to design their Secure Object technology upon which is based their Secure Envelopes product. According to Telford: “We looked at encryption and then at security from an identity management perspective and thought that a file does not belong to a file server or to a hard drive, it belongs to a person. The owner should be able to decide who is permitted to see that file…”

Secure Envelopes
Secure Envelopes is a way of electronically “wrapping” sensitive files, e-mail attachments, and other data to keep them from being seen by unintended eyes. Telford claims that Cocoon Data’s encryption technology — which has patents pending — is unique.

Unlike other encryption technology, Secure Envelopes is user friendly, allows access to a document to be revoked even after the intended recipient has received it, and, most importantly, the attachment, encryption keys and access rule are all separated and are held elsewhere, so even a brute force hack attack cannot gain access to information protected in a Secure Envelope. According to Mathew Collet, Senior VP for Business Development at Cocoon