Yesterday was one of those days where the events of the day converge and there is an epiphany. I spent most of the working day planning the upcoming AIIM Market IQ on Content Security with Dan Keldsen (blog). We grappled with defining the various facets of content security, how to define them and their respective value propositions and what this topic should be called. Is Content Security indicative of everything we mean when we talk about the subject?
In the evening I treated myself to pure mindless leisure – yes, I watched television. The first show I watched was an extension to The Antiques Roadshow (not sure if it had its own name), and the second was the live coverage of the 50 year commemoration of the Truman Presidential Library.
On the "roadshow" program two individuals each had a document, a photo from the post Civil War era and a handwritten parchment purported to have been signed by President Thomas Jefferson. The photo was puzzling because it showed two African American soldiers along with several white soldiers at what appeared to be a commemoration of some sort. Historians using documents (ranging from chronicles in the Library of Congress, personal family histories and records in local government offices) unraveled the mystery of the photo and educated its owner (and me) regarding a group called the GAR (Grand Army of the Republic) and how it was integrated from the outset, despite the then popular separate but equal attitudes of the nation. What was fascinating was how they tracked down the identity of the two gentleman in the photo, an din one case contact a living relative and bring them to the grave of their heroic ancestor. (The GAR is now defunct.)
Former President Bill Clinton spoke at the Truman Library commemoration, in what was, in my opinion the most eloquent speech I ever saw him give. Within this speech, Clinton commented that one way we know about President Truman is through his library, his collection of documents. (Until Truman, there was no Presidential Libraries Act, formally establishing and funding the presidential libraries.) Aside from the official records captured from the oval office, there is much to be learned from the informal and formal writings of the president, as well as taped conversations.
This is when the epiphany happened. Many talk about content security as a way to protect content from leakage, from the compliance and regulation perspective. Surety, a security software and services company maintains a "Wall of Shame". I am a big fan of the site, but unfortunately it too drives home the message of the need for content security from the "gotcha" perspective. What about content security from the knowledge management perspective? This is an aspect of content security we will cover in the upcoming Market IQ. Systematic and governed capture of organizational content, that is properly tagged, maintained and capable of being easily searched, builds an online corporate memory with, if done properly, near perfect recall. Herein lies a great benefit from content security, the capture of corporate memory, or the elimination of corporate amnesia. Virtually every corporate executive today whines about the loss of know how with the aging of the work force and the rapid turnover in staff. Perhaps content security is an answer to that problem. A systematic, governed and automated approach to properly capturing, authenticating, maintaining and making available "all" corporate know how.
Many years ago I gave a keynote address at the first Documentum user group, Momentum. The address was entitled "Documents: The DNA of an Organization". I proposed that if properly leveraged workflow and document management tools would create an organization DNA, a trace to who, what, when, where and why of the organization. Since then, ECM tools have only gotten more powerful, augmented with associated technologies such as portals, blogs, etc., and yet we have not reached perfect corporate DNA. Why? Unlike human DNA, corporate DNA , is not automatically intrinsic. It must be manually built in. Unlike human DNA, corporate DNA does not automatically have a long shelf life. It must be carefully maintained and protected. Unlike human DNA, corporate DNA is not impervious to tampering. It must be protected and authenticated.
But if we do create corporate DNA, we are killing two birds with one stone. The objectives of content security can be met, while simultaneously creating near perfect corporate memory. 
