Systems and methods for securely providing information external to documents

1. A computer-implemented method for securely providing information external to documents, at least a portion of the method being performed by a computing device comprising at least one processor, the method comprising:

identifying a document that comprises a file comprising at least one link to content external to the document, wherein the document is destined for a restricted network environment that only allows secure content;

retrieving, prior to delivering the document to the restricted network environment, the content external to the document from the link;

converting, prior to delivering the document to the restricted network environment, the content external to the document to embeddable content in a secure format that can be embedded within the document by storing the embeddable content within the file by rendering the content for display and creating an image of the rendered content;

creating, prior to delivering the document to the restricted network environment, a secure version of the document at least in part by embedding the embeddable content that has been converted to the secure format into the document by storing the embeddable content within the file, thereby providing secure access to the content external to the document via the file rather than via a reference to data stored outside the file;

delivering the secure version of the document to the restricted network environment.

2. The computer-implemented method of claim 1 , wherein creating the secure version of the document comprises modifying the link to point to the embeddable content within the secure version of the document.

3. The computer-implemented method of claim 1 ,

wherein identifying the document comprises identifying a file stream comprising the document en route to a destination via a network gateway;

further comprising sending the secure version of the document to the destination via the network gateway in place of the document.

4. The computer-implemented method of claim 1 , wherein creating the secure version of the document is based at least in part on a content policy comprising at least one of:

a copyright rule that applies to the content;

a licensing rule that applies to the content.

5. The computer-implemented method of claim 1 , wherein converting the content external to the document to embeddable content in the secure format that can be embedded within the document comprises:

performing a security check on the link;

determining, based on the security check, that the link is untrusted;

sanitizing, based on the link being untrusted, the content retrieved from the link.

6. The computer-implemented method of claim 1 , wherein creating the secure version of the document is in response to determining that the document has been sent to a restricted network environment that only allows sanitized content.

7. The computer-implemented method of claim 1 , wherein retrieving the content external to the document from the link comprises recursively retrieving additional external content from at least one additional link within the content until a predetermined depth threshold is reached.

8. The computer-implemented method of claim 1 , wherein creating the secure version of the document is in response to the link within the document being disabled.

9. The computer-implemented method of claim 1 , wherein embedding the embeddable content that has been converted to the secure format into the document comprises adding into the document at least one of:

a uniform resource locator from which the content was retrieved;

a date when the content was retrieved.

10. A system for securely providing information external to documents, the system comprising:

an identification module, stored in memory, programmed to identify a document that comprises a file comprising at least one link to content external to the document, wherein the document is destined for a restricted network environment that only allows secure content;

a retrieving module, stored in memory, programmed to retrieve, prior to delivering the document to the restricted network environment, the content external to the document from the link;

a converting module, stored in memory, programmed to convert, prior to delivering the document to the restricted network environment, the content external to the document to embeddable content in a secure format that can be embedded within the document by storing the embeddable content within the file by rendering the content for display and creating an image of the rendered content;

a creation module, stored in memory, programmed to create, prior to delivering the document to the restricted network environment, a secure version of the document at least in part by embedding the embeddable content that has been converted to the secure format into the document by storing the embeddable content within the file, thereby providing secure access to the content external to the document via the file rather than via a reference to data stored outside the file;

at least one processor configured to execute the identification module, the retrieving module, the converting module and the creation module.

11. The system of claim 10 , wherein the creation module is programmed to create the secure version of the document by modifying the link to point to the embeddable content within the secure version of the document.

12. The system of claim 10 ,

wherein the identification module is programmed to identify the document by identifying a file stream comprising the document en route to a destination via a network gateway;

further comprising a sending module programmed to send the secure version of the document to the destination via the network gateway in place of the document.

13. The system of claim 10 , wherein the creation module is programmed to create the secure version of the document based at least in part on a content policy comprising at least one of:

a copyright rule that applies to the content;

a licensing rule that applies to the content.

14. The system of claim 10 , wherein the converting module is programmed to convert the content external to the document to embeddable content in the secure format that can be embedded within the document by:

performing a security check on the link;

determining, based on the security check, that the link is untrusted;

sanitizing, based on the link being untrusted, the content retrieved from the link.

15. The system of claim 10 , wherein the creation module is programmed to create the secure version of the document in response to determining that the document has been sent to a restricted network environment that only allows sanitized content.

16. A non-transitory computer-readable-storage medium comprising one or more computer-readable instructions that, when executed by at least one processor of a computing device, cause the computing device to:

identify a document that comprises a file comprising at least one link to content external to the document, wherein the document is destined for a restricted network environment that only allows secure content;

retrieve, prior to delivering the document to the restricted network environment, the content external to the document from the link;

convert, prior to delivering the document to the restricted network environment, the content external to the document to embeddable content in a secure format that can be embedded within the document by storing the embeddable content within the file by rendering the content for display and creating an image of the rendered content;

create, prior to delivering the document to the restricted network environment, a secure version of the document at least in part by embedding the embeddable content that has been converted to the secure format into the document by storing the embeddable content within the file, thereby providing secure access to the content external to the document via the file rather than via a reference to data stored outside the file.

17. The computer-implemented method of claim 3 , further comprising:

imposing, at the network gateway, a document policy that restricts content retrieved from links;

creating the secure version of the document in response to determining that the file stream represents a file that is of a file type that is subject to the document policy.

18. The computer-implemented method of claim 1 , wherein

the restricted network environment comprises at least one computing system that is not directly connected to an external network such that links contained within documents cannot be resolved by the at least one computing system.

19. The computer-implemented method of claim 7 , wherein:

converting the content external to the document to embeddable content comprises converting the additional external content into secure additional embeddable content;

embedding the embeddable content comprises storing the secure additional embeddable content within the file.

20. The computer-implemented method of claim 1 , wherein identifying the document occurs in response to receiving a request for the document, the request originating from inside the restricted network environment.