In Silicon Valley, the recruiting game is extremely competitive, according to Ron Harrison, founder of Jivaro Professional Headhunters, a specialist in placing technology candidates. <\/p>\n
In some cases, Harrison said the difference between getting nothing and a US$30,000 fee has come down to the few slim minutes between when one recruiter sent a resume to a company and a competing recruiter did. <\/p>\n
Its a dirty business, Harrison said in a phone interview. <\/p>\n
Recruiting is complicated by the fact that companies may share resumes, even if the receiving company isnt a client of the recruiter. Essentially, it means a recruiter loses its intellectual property through a gaping hole: an unencrypted document can be sent to anyone. <\/p>\n
But Harrisons company is one of 10 trying software from a startup named Vera that aims to lock down documents transferred over email or other file-sharing services such as Box or Dropbox. <\/p>\n
Cofounder Ajay Arora said Vera addresses a common enterprise problem: once a document leaves a companys network, its just out there for anyone to see who receives itor intercepts it. <\/p>\n
While there is a lot of software out there that tackles this problem, Arora said he wanted to create a product that is very easy to use and doesnt interrupt the workflow of employees. Harrison, for example, said he was up and running in a few minutes with Vera, and it was easy for his employees to use. <\/p>\n
With a right click on a file, a set of policies can be attached to, for example, a resume. The resume is encrypted, with the decryption key passed only to the authorized recipient, who doesnt have to install Veras software. <\/p>\n
The document wont open if it is forwarded to someone else. It can also be time-bombed, or locked up after a predetermined amount of time, or blocked from being printed. Copy-and-pasting can also be stopped. <\/p>\n
Vera uses AES 256-bit encryption to scramble a file, and then puts a metadata wrapper around it that contains the policies attached to it. The metadata wrapper phones back to Veras servers to make sure the authorized recipient is opening it, and then a symmetric key is securely transferred from Veras servers to the recipient to decrypt it, Arora said. <\/p>\n
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