Do information leak prevention products protect critical data?

Do information leak prevention products protect critical data?

How do information leak protection products use the network, and are they effective in protecting critical data?

    Requires Free Membership to View

    SearchSecurity.com members gain immediate and unlimited access to breaking industry news, virus alerts, new hacker threats, highly focused security newsletters, and more -- all at no cost. Join me on SearchSecurity.com today!

    Michael S. Mimoso, Editorial Director

    By submitting your registration information to SearchSecurity.com you agree to receive email communications from TechTarget and TechTarget partners. We encourage you to read our Privacy Policy which contains important disclosures about how we collect and use your registration and other information. If you reside outside of the United States, by submitting this registration information you consent to having your personal data transferred to and processed in the United States. Your use of SearchSecurity.com is governed by our Terms of Use. You may contact us at webmaster@TechTarget.com.

Protecting organizations against an information leak is quite a challenge, and the technology to assist with this herculean task is relatively immature. However, there are several products on the market today that can help achieve this difficult goal.

The mechanisms used by content protection systems vary from one product to another. Most are based upon pattern matching or signature detection. The former requires administrators to provide patterns (e.g. regular expressions) that describe sensitive data. This technique is especially useful when you're attempting to detect outbound flows of Social Security numbers and/or credit card information. For example, you might use the regular expression "d{3}-d{2}-d{4}" to match a standard U.S. SSN consisting of ten digits hyphenated in the form xxx-xx-xxxx. Signature detection systems typically require administrators to "register" sensitive content with the protection system. Administrators can do so by uploading individual files, scanning a file share or integrating with a document management system.

When using a content protection system, it is important to have realistic expectations. These systems tend to require a great deal of administrative attention to install, configure/tune and operate. If you expect a "plug and play" product, you'll likely be disappointed.

More information:

  • Learn how Google Notebook can expose an enterprise's confidential information.
  • When building a database application, sensitive data is often made available unintentionally. In this tip, Michael Cobb explains how the information is leaked.
  • This was first published in March 2007