Overview

Today, data is a valuable commodity. It has value to the organizations who own it and to those looking to exploit it through illegal activity. Data can be sensitive customer or employee information, financial or strategic information, product designs or intellectual property, or any data that could undermine an organization’s market competitiveness. When this data is leaked from the organization without permission, it faces a breach and potential fine for non-compliance with industry regulations.

Email is an obvious route in and out of the organization and with billions of emails sent and received each day, it can be difficult to distinguish between what is a legitimate communication and what is a data leakage threat.

Threats can come from inside the organization, employees accidentally or maliciously sharing sensitive data, or from an external source via a spear-phishing campaign. Spear-phishing emails fraudulently encourage the recipient to share sensitive data or to open an attachment that releases malware into the network. While employee training is key in recognizing these risks, it’s ultimately technology that can prevent them from succeeding.

To prevent data leakage through email and maintain regulatory compliance, organizations deploy HelpSystems’ adaptive data loss prevention (DLP) software to provide visibility of the data entering/leaving the organization. The software monitors and scans for sensitive or hidden data and potential cyber-threats, and if found, automatically removes, deletes, or sanitizes the content before it is opened or shared. This process occurs in real time, reducing threats without impacting an organizations ability to continuously collaborate.

As well as the automated removal of sensitive data from messages and Office 365 files, the solution also masks sensitive data from image-based files using Optical Character Recognition technology – a feature unique to HelpSystems. An anti-steganography feature also ensures that images are wiped clean of any hidden data they may contain.