Secude

Data Protection and Digital Rights Management for CAD Files

Secude is headquartered in Lucerne, Switzerland and is a leading global provider of data protection and digital rights management solutions serving the AEC industry. Secude's solutions extend corporate data governance and data loss prevention (DLP) to CAD and related construction files through integration with systems that work with Microsoft Purview Information Protection (MPIP).

This protection remains attached to the protected files wherever they travel. It provides a means for file tracking through real-time activity logs and prevents unauthorised access through encryption technology. Access controls defined in protection policies can grant specific users very granular access to individual application functions when working with shared documents.

Why CAD Files Are a Governance Blind Spot

Most enterprise data protection was built around documents, email and spreadsheets. Drawings, models and design files often fall outside it - they live in specialist applications, move between design partners, contractors and fabricators, and frequently carry the most commercially sensitive intellectual property a project produces. A protection scheme that covers the Office estate but stops at the CAD environment leaves exactly the wrong gap. Secude's approach is to bring those file types inside the same governance framework the rest of the business already uses, rather than running a separate parallel system for design data.

Watermarking, Metadata and Digital Signing

Secude solutions provide capabilities for applying digital watermarking, metadata implantation and digital signing technology to CAD and related construction documents. Used in combination, these create several routes to proving non-repudiated document ownership and validating the intended parties documents were shared with. This does not completely limit access, but it does provide a way to determine accountability should sensitive files be leaked.

Automated Compliance Marking

Secude solutions provide additional capabilities for automating compliance markings on CAD and other construction-related files. This includes specific markings for Export Controlled Information (ECI) and Controlled Unclassified Information (CUI) for CMMC compliance, and can incorporate dynamic watermarking that shows the last user to edit the file along with a timestamp.

For firms working on defence, aerospace or federal infrastructure projects, these markings are contractual obligations rather than good practice, and applying them by hand across thousands of drawing files is both slow and unreliable. Automating the marking step is often what makes compliance workable at project scale.

The Secude Application Suite

HaloCAD

HaloCAD applies Microsoft Purview Information Protection sensitivity labels and AES encryption directly to files from within the CAD user interface. This is seamless to the user and allows CAD files to become classified and operate within the Purview data governance platform, so DLP policies can be applied to ensure data cannot be stolen.

MPIP sensitivity labels also provide rules enforceable inside the CAD interface, adding a layer of access control defined at user or group level by restricting functions such as edit, export and print. The AES encryption applied by MPIP ensures that files are useless to anyone who manages to get them outside the enterprise.

HaloSHARE

HaloSHARE is a workflow tool that performs batch transformation of CAD, Microsoft Office and PDF files to apply various levels of identification and protection. Its digital rights management methods include document compliance marking, metadata implantation and digital document signing, all performed batch style, delivering the transformed documents to multiple local or cloud data stores including Autodesk Docs.

Document marking can include standard watermarking or specially formatted text identifying Export Controlled Information, Controlled Unclassified Information or other special compliance markings. Metadata implantation and digital signing ensure documents can be traced back to their original owners or to the parties they were shared with. HaloSHARE MPIP methods can also bulk-process files to apply sensitivity labels, encrypt or decrypt files, and deliver them to multiple local or cloud-hosted destination storage locations.

Protection That Survives Sharing

The distinguishing characteristic of this model is that controls travel with the file rather than sitting around it. Perimeter security, access-controlled folders and secure file transfer all stop working the moment a drawing legitimately leaves the organisation - which, on any real project, it must. Persistent encryption and embedded policy mean a file forwarded outside its intended recipient list still refuses to open, and one that is opened still records who opened it and when.

Who Secude Serves

Secude's solutions are aimed at architecture, engineering and construction organisations, manufacturers and asset owners that handle sensitive design data across distributed project teams and external supply chains - particularly those subject to export control, CMMC or comparable regulatory regimes where the consequences of an uncontrolled drawing release extend well beyond commercial risk.