Data Loss Prevention Overview

 

The Data Loss Problem

Data loss prevention (DLP) is a serious issue for companies, as the number of incidents (and the cost to those experiencing them) continues to increase. Whether it’s a malicious attempt, or an inadvertent mistake, data loss can diminish a company’s brand, reduce shareholder value, and damage the company’s goodwill and reputation.

Whether it’s email, instant messaging, webmail, a form on a website, or file transfer, electronic communications exiting the company still go largely uncontrolled and unmonitored on their way to their destinations – with the ever-present potential for confidential information to fall into the wrong hands. Should sensitive information be exposed, it can wreak havoc on the organization’s bottom line through fines, bad publicity, loss of strategic customers, loss of competitive intelligence and legal action. All avenues of electronic communication need to be policed to prevent intellectual property, financial information, patient information, personal credit card data, and a variety of sensitive information (depending on the business and the industry) from falling into the wrong hands.

Across all key protocols, a high-performance, intelligent data loss prevention (DLP) solution is a must-have for today’s organizations. Decision-makers should look to vendors with deep expertise in content scanning and select a best-of-breed DLP solution.

Download IronPort DLP Technology Datasheet

 

The IronPort Solution

IronPort delivers high-performance, comprehensive data loss prevention for data in motion – helping organizations both large and small prevent leaks, enforce compliance, and protect their brand and reputation. IronPort believes that a holistic solution for monitoring and data loss protection across all communication channels is vital to ensure the integrity of an organization's policies. Leadership within the Internet security market, together with its partnerships with industry-leading DLP vendors, puts IronPort in the unique position to offer a single vantage point to enterprises for this critical functionality.

Simplify the complexity of protecting sensitive communications.

Next Generation Compliance Filters

IronPort’s pre-defined content filters for HIPAA, GLB, SOX and other regulations automatically scan emails for protected financial and health information. Easily extensible lexicons allow companies to customize these rules to meet specific requirements.

IronPort Email Encryption

Industry-leading encryption technology enables IronPort users to comply with regulatory requirements related to the securing of health and financial information. The company’s secure email delivery solution seamlessly encrypts, decrypts and digitally signs confidential email messages. IronPort provides a unified solution for enforcing granular encryption policies, and guarantees message signing (sender and recipient verification) and integrity while protecting messages stored on servers.

High-Performance, Multi-Protocol Content Scanning

IronPort’s high-performance content scanning engine provides flexibility and fine-grained controls for effective monitoring of outbound messages for sensitive information. Organizations can scan and filter virtually any portion of an outbound message (message headers, subject, sender, recipient, attachment type or content, and message body content) for specific keywords, regular expressions, as well the contents of pre-defined or customizable dictionaries. These capabilities allow for a wide variety of policy enforcement options – drop, bounce, alter, archive, or encrypt a message, generate a notification, and/or blind carbon-copy the message to an archive or compliance officer.

Web and Instant Messaging Protection

Not limited to email messaging, IronPort delivers state-of-the-art functionality to detect and block the loss of sensitive data via Web and instant messaging. Based on its advanced content filtering capabilities, IronPort can stop: FTP sessions and uploads, IM sessions (including HTTP-tunneled IM sessions, native IM sessions and access to IM sites), access to peer-to-peer file sharing sites (including HTTP-tunneled and native P2P sessions) as well as spyware “phone home” activity. IronPort technology also prevents keyloggers and system monitors from entering the network.

Enterprise Management Tools

Detailed logs and reports identify messages that trigger specific policy rules and track the actions taken on these messages. For example, an email administrator can verify whether outgoing messages to a particular recipient were encrypted. This enables administrators to effectively meet the logging and reporting requirements of even the most stringent regulatory requirements. Additionally, this information is maintained under change control, which provides the kind of auditability called for in email-related regulations.