Make Sure Your Translations Are Protected Too
Are you wondering what working from home has to do with a translation memory system (TMS) provider’s blog? Quite a lot, as a matter of fact! Below you will find out why it is important to carefully examine the data security situation of those working from home. You can also see where the pitfalls lie specifically in your translation processes and how you can optimize them so that your company can reliably share data even when so many employees are working from home.
March 2020. The world still seemed to be in order – no one could have imagined the degree to which everything would change within just a few weeks. Then the big shock came: COVID-19. In the very same month, the world’s office workers began working from home. It was a situation that raised many questions:
Can we continue to function in the new reality? What devices can employees use when working from home? How secure are the internet connections? How can an employer ensure that their employees install all the necessary software updates? Many are able to take their company laptop home with them and continue working without interruption, but not all of them. It was necessary to find ad hoc solutions, with sensitive company data suddenly being sent via private computers. That was okay at first, as there was no real alternative. Nevertheless, it was a fiasco in terms of data security.
In the meantime, many employers and employees adapted to the new situation, and work continued almost like before the pandemic, only everything moved online. At the same time, it became apparent that more people would be working from home on an ongoing basis. And that is precisely why now is the right time to ask yourself: As an employer, have I already done everything to ensure data security for employees working from home?
More working from home pose challenges for security concepts in companies.
To safeguard data security over the long run, companies need to draft a security plan and stick to it. The question of information security should be posed with regard to all processes in the company – including those relating to translation. Even before the pandemic, many companies paid too little heed to the issue of data security in translation processes. Texts continued to be sent to the translation service provider by e-mail, after which they were also e-mailed back in translated form by the agreed deadline. But what happened to the data in the meantime? It’s something you don’t really know – out of sight, out of mind, so to speak.
However, it is precisely these security vulnerabilities, as they can only be appropriately designated, that can quickly get a company into dangerous territory.
Ad hoc solutions needed to be transformed into lasting security concepts.
The first weak point in the translation process seems harmless at first glance: trusty old e-mail. However, looks can be deceiving. Here’s a small example to illustrate the point: Shortly before heading home for the day, you send out an important text to be translated and enter the wrong recipient’s address by mistyping their name and accidentally accepting an automatically suggested entry. The text does not get sent as intended to Melanie Schmidt, a project manager at the translation agency of your choice, but to Melanie Schmieder, a sales manager at a competitor with whom you exchanged e-mails some time ago. Now what do you do? The text contains sensitive customer data that should definitely not fall into the hands of a competitor. If you are lucky and notice the error in time, you can recall the e-mail, but this feature is not available on all popular e-mail providers.
During the coronavirus pandemic, many ad hoc solutions that compromise data security were being used by the many employees who were suddenly working out of their own homes. When work is done over private internet connections without any protective measures, there is a high risk of data unintentionally being disclosed to third parties, mostly as a result of phishing attacks or ransomware. Data storage in the cloud represents another security vulnerability. While cloud solutions have many advantages, they are also associated with risks if used in an uncontrolled manner. Perhaps an employee wants to quickly save a report on the server of a commercial cloud provider in order to continue working on it later from home or on the go and then send it for translation when it is finished. Unfortunately, his password was stolen during a cyber attack a few months ago, and sensitive information ended up unprotected on the net. Keep in mind: If you give your employees the option to store data in the cloud, you should first review and approve the cloud provider as a company.
Without a proper translation process and the necessary measures to protect corporate data, it is easy to forward and disclose translation texts to others. This point is tightly linked with the first two but nevertheless distinct from them. Why is this the case? Even if your e-mail service functions as it should and the home Internet connection is secure, if you don’t have the right system infrastructure for translations, the translations are nothing more than ordinary files that can be forwarded and disclosed to others in the usual way – whether by e-mail, by sharing in the cloud, by saving the files to a USB stick, or even by forwarding via WhatsApp.
If you want to use cloud solutions, it is necessary to define clear rules in order to have the greatest possible benefit from the arrangement.
Extra Tip
For more tips on secure processes, please also read the article Be on the Safe Side: Protect Your Translations.
In this blog, we have already discussed the advantages and disadvantages of machine translation in detail. Those interested in the topic will find information in the articles “Machine Translation for Companies” and “Machine Translation for Translators”. Whether the use of machine translation makes sense is something each company must carefully consider for itself. On one basis or another, you should determine whether or not machine translation may be used in your supply chain. However, it is again important to note that without a system for processing translations, it’s not really possible to monitor how machine translation is used. All machine translation systems process the imported data with the goal of improving quality. In the worst-case scenario, content that is entered into machine translation engines is made available on the net in unprotected form. By integrating machine translation into your translation management system in a controlled manner, you can deliberately set boundaries for the use of machine translation, thereby reducing uncontrolled use of machine translation by your employees or language service providers as shadow software.
Last but not least, we also need to briefly discuss the Privacy Shield and its invalidity. After rollout of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the European Union agreed the EU-US Privacy Shield with the United States, which gave the international transfer of personal information between the two continents the same protection as in the European Union. This is also relevant for translations, as European companies often use translation service providers in the USA. After the umbrella agreement for the Privacy Shield was overturned in August 2020, it became necessary for companies to use standard contractual clauses to ensure data security. This is all the more reason to scrutinize data streams outside the EU as a whole.
All of this may make you anxious about your data security as a whole, but we encourage you to take a deep breath. You have to take these security vulnerabilities seriously, but fortunately there is an easy solution for ensuring the data security of your translations: a translation management system (TMS). In a nutshell, a TMS is a software environment that allows all translation processes to be safely managed. It is no longer necessary to send e-mails with texts attached, translators work safely on the company’s server, and texts and translations cannot be exported from the translation environment without the company’s consent. In addition, you can specify whether machine translation may be used and, if allowed, precisely which machine translation engine can be utilized (whether DeepL, SYSTRAN, KantanMT, or Google Translate) and how. At the same time, companies can also use a TMS to overcome other challenges and sticking points, such as ensuring uniformity of translations and compliance with company-specific terminology as well as reducing the cost of translations in general.
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Does it sound too good to be true? If you’re new to the topic, we recommend the article “All about Translation Management Systems” for further information. If you have specific questions or are interested in our software, you can of course also contact us personally.
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