JP2005056092A - Electronic documentation management system and same method - Google Patents

Abstract

<P>PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To acquire an electronic documentation management system and the same method which raise the efficiency of a field test. <P>SOLUTION: Acknowledgement information to permit transmission of an electronic document to outside is added to the electronic document in addition to a security classification, and when this electronic document is transmitted to outside, the security classification and the acknowledgement information are deleted and the transmission is performed. A function to distinguish the security classification of the document to be transmitted from an internal network 1 to an external network 3 and a function to distinguish the existence of permission for transmission to the outside are set at a gateway 2 used as a contact point of the internal network 1 and the external network 3. Thereby, in relation to the document data to be transmitted from the internal network to the external network (the direction of the Internet), the electronic data decided as a secret document can be prevented from being transmitted to the external network with intentionally or negligence. <P>COPYRIGHT: (C)2005,JPO&NCIPI

Description

  The present invention relates to an electronic document management system and method for improving the efficiency of an electronic document management system using a computer.

  Currently, there is an e-mail transmission / reception service as an Internet service provided to users by Internet service providers (ISPs). As an extension of the e-mail transmission / reception service, e-mails are checked for viruses and infected. If so, there is a service that will remove the virus. As described above, there are many other types of devices called firewalls (FWs) for services that prevent harmful data from entering the internal network (inside the home or corporate network) from the external network (Internet). Existing.

  In some cases, an FW is installed for the purpose of avoiding unnecessary connection from an internal network to an external network. In general, this is done by limiting the connection destination with an address for identifying the access destination or limiting the terminals that can be connected to the outside. As a method for limiting the terminals that can be connected to the outside, for example, a combination of an IP address and a port number, a user name and a password can be identified.

One of the measures proposed to prevent leakage in the prior art is that the segment controller acquires the signal transmitted on the LAN, specifies the transmission source and transmission destination of the acquired signal, and registers the access right / transmission source. , Etc. (see Patent Document 1). In another conventional example, a specific mark / character written at a specific location is confirmed to determine whether transmission is possible (see Patent Document 3).
Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2002-232451 Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 06-315036 Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 07-203192 Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 08-204701

However, the above-described conventional system has the following problems.
The first problem is that it cannot prevent a document containing confidential information from being transmitted to an external network intentionally or accidentally. In particular, there is a high possibility that the defensive means will not work at all for intentional transmission.

  The reason is that the confidentiality and importance of a document depend on the contents of the document, and its contents are determined by humans. The system that configures the network can only use information contained in conventional documents. This is because the contents cannot be judged. Therefore, the effectiveness of the defense function substantially depends only on human operations.

  According to the first aspect of the present invention, there is provided an electronic document management system for managing an electronic document transmitted / received by e-mail, wherein a gateway for managing an electronic document transmitted / received between an Internet network and an internal network is provided. The electronic document transmitted from the network to the Internet network is provided with a secret section for identifying whether the electronic document is secret or not, and the gateway is configured to prevent the electronic document designating the secret section from being transmitted to the outside. It is characterized by that.

  According to a second aspect of the present invention, in the electronic document management system according to the first aspect, in addition to the confidential classification of the electronic document, approval information that permits transmission to the outside is added to the electronic document, and the electronic document is When sending to, it is good to delete the secret classification and approval information.

  According to a third aspect of the present invention, in the electronic document management system according to the first or second aspect, the internal network includes a data sender for transmitting the electronic document to the outside and an approval for permitting transmission of the electronic document to the outside. It may be configured to have a transmission data checker that adds information to the electronic document.

  According to a fourth aspect of the present invention, in the electronic document management system according to the second or third aspect, the gateway includes a secret classification determining unit that determines the contents of the secret classification and the contents of the approval information, the secret classification and the approval. It may be configured to have a mail reconstruction unit that deletes information.

  The invention according to claim 5 is an electronic document management method for managing an electronic document transmitted and received by electronic mail, and identifies whether or not the electronic document is secret from the electronic document transmitted from the internal network to the Internet network. And providing a gateway for managing electronic documents transmitted / received between the Internet network and the internal network, and preventing the electronic document having the secret classification designated by the gateway from being transmitted to the outside. It is a feature.

  According to a sixth aspect of the present invention, in the electronic document management method according to the fifth aspect, in addition to the confidential classification of the electronic document, approval information that permits transmission to the outside is added to the electronic document, and the electronic document is When sending to, it is good to delete the secret classification and approval information.

  According to a seventh aspect of the present invention, in the electronic document management method according to the fifth aspect, the secret classification is determined to determine whether the document is permitted to be transmitted to the outside. If it is detected that an e-mail that is not allowed to be sent to the external network, it is notified to the transmission data checker.

  The electronic document management system and method according to the present invention include a function for determining a secret classification of a document transmitted from the internal network to the external network at a gateway serving as a contact point between the internal network and the external network, and whether or not transmission to the outside is permitted. It is characterized by providing a function for discriminating between. This discriminating function prevents other documents than allowed from being transmitted from the internal network to the external network. As a result, the following effects can be obtained.

In the present invention, the effect of preventing erroneous transmission of a secret document and intentional transmission can be obtained. This will be described in further detail with the following effects.
The first effect is that a secret document that has not been approved can be prevented from being transmitted to the outside. The reason is that the gateway determines whether or not the document file has been approved for transmission to the outside and does not transmit a file without approval. Another reason is to prevent MIME type mail other than the original format at the gateway.
The second effect is that a function of detecting transmission of a secret document file can be implemented economically. The reason is that by collecting the secret document file transmission detection function in the gateway, an external Internet service provider can collectively manage the facilities and receive a service contract from a company or an individual as a user.

  The electronic document management system according to the present invention may prevent electronic data determined to be a confidential document from being transmitted to an external network intentionally or negligently from document data transmitted from an internal network to an external network (Internet direction). I can do it.

The overall network configuration of the electronic document management system of the present invention will be described with reference to FIG. In the first embodiment, the data sender is a person who sends a mail text or attached document file to an external network by e-mail, and sends it to a destination existing in the external network via the gateway and the Internet. Send e-mail to. Unless otherwise specified, the mail text and the attached document file are collectively referred to as electronic mail.
The gateway 2 determines the secret classification of the electronic mail transmitted from the internal network 1 to the external network 3, and determines whether the document is permitted to be transmitted to the outside. As a result of the determination, when it is detected that an electronic mail that is not normally permitted is transmitted to the external network 3, it has a function of notifying a transmission data checker described later.

FIG. 2 shows details of the gateway 2 shown in FIG. The internal network interface is an interface portion for the internal network 1 in FIG. 1 and is used for data exchange with the internal network 1. The external network interface is an interface part to the external network 3 and the Internet in FIG. 1 and is used to transfer data from the internal network 1 to the external network 3. The secret category discriminating unit discriminates the secret category of the document file in the e-mail and determines whether or not the document file can be transmitted to the outside. The mail reconstruction unit has a function of converting an e-mail file configured in a unique format in the internal network into a format that can be interpreted by a general e-mail transmission / reception system.
The e-mail transmission unit has a function of transmitting an e-mail to an e-mail server on an external network.

(Description of operation)
Next, the operation of the electronic document management system shown in the present embodiment will be described in the following order.
In the first step, a document is created.
In the second step, the external transmission document is approved.
In the third step, document mail transmission processing (terminal side) is performed.
In the fourth step, processing at the time of sending an e-mail with a document attached is performed.

FIG. 3 shows an operation example when creating a secret document in the document creation in the first step.
In step S301, a document is created using a document editing application.
In step S302, a secret section is set for the document created in step S301. Specifically, by using a specific application, the secret section and the name of the person who set the secret section corresponding to the document are attached to the header portion or trailer portion of the document. A digital signature is attached to the item in which the secret category and the secret category are set so that a third party cannot rewrite the item. If it is not a secret document, it is clearly set not to be a secret document (there is no secret section, not a secret document).

  In the second step of approving an externally transmitted document, an example of an operation when an approval process necessary for transmitting a secret document to an external network is performed in advance will be described with reference to FIG. FIG. 4 shows the processing of the approval requester and the approver.

  In steps S401 and S402 to S404, when the document approval requester issues an approval request to the document approver, the document approver confirms the content of the corresponding document and determines whether the document can be transmitted to the external network. Make a decision. In addition to the document, the name of the sender, the name of the destination (email recipient), the contact information, etc. are passed to the document approver as materials for the judgment.

  If it is determined in step S404 that the document approver can approve it, in step S405, the document approver's digital signature is attached to the header portion or trailer portion of the document as a proof of approval by the approver. When it is determined that the approval should not be made, the approval requester is notified at that time.

FIG. 5 shows an example of operation on the terminal side when transmitting a document approved by an approver when transmitting a confidential document to the outside in the document mail transmission process (terminal side) in the third step. It explains using.
In step S501, the confidential classification of the attached document and the document type (for example, PDF file, Word file, etc.) are confirmed.
In step S502, a mail document is created with a unique MIME type that matches the secret classification of the document confirmed in step S501 and the document type. The MIME type is a unique format and should be added / deleted according to the secret classification and the file type classification.
In step S503, the document created in step S502 is transmitted to the gateway. The protocol here may be SMTP, which is a standard mail transmission protocol, but is not particularly specified.

An example of processing at the time of sending an e-mail attached with a document in the fourth step is shown below.
FIG. 6 shows an operation example when the gateway of FIG. 2 receives an electronic mail from the internal network and transmits it to the external network.
In step S601, the gateway accepts an e-mail sent by the data sender.
In step S602, the mail MIME type is determined. If it is not a unique MIME type defined by the internal network, transmission to the outside is not performed.
In step S603, it is determined whether or not the MIME type confirmed in step S602 is a type that can be transmitted to the external network. If the type is acceptable, the process proceeds to step S606. If the type cannot be transmitted without approval, the process proceeds to step S604.

In step S604, it is confirmed whether or not approval information is included in the document file. The location where the approval information is included may be included in a different location (for example, header, trailer, etc.) depending on the file type indicated by the MIME type. If there is approval data, the process proceeds to step S605. If there is no approval data, the process proceeds to step S609.
In step S605, the approval data is removed and converted into a document format that can be displayed on an external general terminal.

In step S606, the gateway changes the original MIME type to the MIME type defined by a standard generally used, and re-edits the mail document.
In step S607, it is confirmed whether or not there is a continuation (there is another MIME type) in the electronic mail accepted in step S601. If not, the process proceeds to step S608, and the mail is transmitted to the outside. If there is another file, the process proceeds to step S602.

In step S609, the data without the approval data notifies the transmission data checker that the unapproved data is about to be transmitted to the outside.
In step S610, the mail sender is notified that the transmission was impossible.

  In the first embodiment of the present invention, the form in which the document creator sets the secret section has been described. However, as another embodiment of the present invention, the transmission data checker confirms the contents of the document and sets the secret section. There is also a form.

1 is an overall network configuration diagram according to an embodiment of the present invention. FIG. It is detail drawing of the gateway in embodiment of this invention. It is a flowchart of document preparation in embodiment of this invention. It is a flowchart which shows the example of a procedure of the external transmission document approval in embodiment of this invention. It is a flowchart which shows the example of a document mail transmission process (terminal side) procedure in embodiment of this invention. It is a flowchart which shows the example of a transmission procedure of the email which attached the document in embodiment of this invention.

Explanation of symbols

1 Internal network 2 Gateway 3 External network

Claims (7)

In an electronic document management system for managing electronic documents sent and received by e-mail,
A gateway for managing the electronic document transmitted and received between the Internet network and the internal network;
An electronic document transmitted from the internal network to the Internet network is provided with a secret section for identifying whether the electronic document is confidential,
An electronic document management system configured to prevent an electronic document designating the secret classification from being transmitted to the outside by the gateway.   In addition to the confidential classification of the electronic document, approval information that permits transmission to the outside is added to the electronic document, and when the electronic document is transmitted to the outside, the confidential classification and the approval information are deleted and transmitted. The electronic document management system according to claim 1.   The internal network includes a data sender that transmits the electronic document to the outside, and a transmission data checker that adds approval information that permits transmission of the electronic document to the outside. The electronic document management system according to claim 1, wherein the electronic document management system is an electronic document management system.   The gateway is configured to include a secret classification determination unit that determines the content of the secret classification and the content of the approval information, and a mail reconstruction unit that deletes the secret classification and the approval information. The electronic document management system according to claim 2 or 3. In an electronic document management method for managing electronic documents sent and received by e-mail,
An electronic document transmitted from the internal network to the Internet network is provided with a secret section for identifying whether the electronic document is confidential,
A gateway for managing the electronic document transmitted and received between the Internet network and the internal network;
An electronic document management method characterized in that an electronic document in which the secret classification is designated by the gateway is prevented from being transmitted to the outside.   In addition to the confidential classification of the electronic document, approval information that permits transmission to the outside is added to the electronic document, and when the electronic document is transmitted to the outside, the confidential classification and the approval information are deleted and transmitted. The electronic document management method according to claim 5.   When the secret classification is determined, it is determined whether or not the document is permitted to be transmitted to the outside, and as a result of the determination, it is detected that an electronic mail that is not normally permitted is transmitted to the external network 6. The electronic document management method according to claim 5, wherein the transmission data checker is notified of the fact.

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