Thinking of self-collecting? Don’t forget to consider metadata and cybersecurity.

It is important to take precautions against altering document metadata during collection of data.

Note that metadata will be altered by, for example, collecting the data and then uploading it to a cloud computing service such as Dropbox. Another potential risk with this approach is cybersecurity – consider that 68 million email addresses and passwords were stolen from Dropbox. There may be justifiable economic reasons for an organization to self-collect, however, one must be cognizant of the potential risks.