Tag: abbyy

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Abbyy looks to RPA to breathe new life in to scanning and workflow

Abbyy has been around for a long time helping companies with scanning and workflow tools, but like many older vendors it has been looking for ways to extend its traditional business model. One way to do that is by teaming up with robotics process automation companies like UIPath. Today, the company announced it has launched the Abbyy FlexiCapture Connector in the UiPath Go! App store.

Bruce Orcutt, senior vice president for product marketing at Abbyy says the connector provides the ability to pull content into UIPath or to take Abbyy content and push it to another part of the automated workflow in UIPath.

UIPath is on a tear these days. Just two months ago, it scored a $225 million Series C investment on a $3 billion valuation. It was able to grow from $1 million to $100 million in annual recurring revenue in just 21 months. As I wrote at the time of the funding, “[UIPath] allows companies to bring a level of automation to legacy processes like accounts payable, employee onboarding, procurement and reconciliation without actually having to replace legacy systems.”

Orcutt sees a natural connection to his company’s workflow roots, bringing it into a more modern context. “RPA simplifies the user experience. Abbyy brings content and context,” he told TechCrunch. He says that while they are still doing OCR to scrape unstructured content, it can do this in fully automated digital process and UIPath can take that content and move it through other parts of an automated workflow.

For Abbyy, UIPath is a big partner, but it’s part of a broader strategy to expand the company’s capabilities to RPA. He says they are working with a variety of RPA vendors beyond UIPath and also with systems integrators as they look to breathe new life into the company’s brand and products.

Orcutt says this is part of significant focus and investment on the part of the company. RPA is clearly a natural fit for Abbyy, but he wasn’t willing to speculate on any deeper partnership. “We’re focusing on what we can do the best we can, and they can focus on merits of their platform. Abbyy can compliment those capabilities.”

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Abbyy leaked 203,000 sensitive customer documents in server lapse

Abbyy, a maker of optical character recognition software, has exposed a trove of sensitive customer documents after a database server was left online without a password.

The exposed server was found by former Kromtech security researcher Bob Diachenko, who now works independently. In a blog post shared prior to publication, he said one of the company’s MongoDB servers was mistakenly configured for public access. He told TechCrunch that the server contained 203,896 scanned files, including contracts, non-disclosure agreements, memos and other highly sensitive documents dating back to 2012.

The data also included corporate usernames and scrambled passwords.

The Moscow-based company specializes in document capture products and services, including converting physical documents to searchable and indexable digital content across a range of languages.

The company claims to serve thousands of organizations and over 50 million users.

After a private disclosure earlier this month, the server was pulled offline. Abbyy confirmed the exposure in an email Monday but did not say why the storage server was left open for anyone to access.

“The incident in question concerns one rather than several customers and files bearing commercial information,” said spokesperson Anna Ivanova-Galitsina. “The customer has been duly notified and we are cooperating on corrective measures.”

“As soon as [Diachenko] notified us we locked external access to the documents. We have made all the notifications that are legally required, have conducted a full corrective security review of our infrastructure, processes and procedures,” the spokesperson said. The company said that the exposure was “a one-off incident and doesn’t compromise any other services, products or clients of the company,” but noted that a “further analysis is ongoing.”

When pressed, the company confirm the name of the customer affected. Abbyy has dozens of major global customers, including Volkswagen, PepsiCo, McDonalds, and the Australian Taxation Office.

Abbyy would not say if anyone else accessed the database.

It’s the latest in a string of exposed MongoDB databases found by Diachenko in recent months, including a popular virtual keyboard app with 31 million users and more recently an app for connecting babysitters.

MongoDB is widely used across the enterprise for scalability and versatility, but many older versions of the database software still in use today operate without a password by default. Last year, hackers took advantage of thousands of exposes servers by downloading and deleting their contents — effectively holding them for ransom.