ESC Outbound Content Compliance Solutions

The Gartner Group estimates that 70 percent of security incidents which actually cause financial losses to enterprises involve insiders. 60% of those are unintentional. The Federal Bureau of Investigation asserts that Insider threats to data security, which have received considerably less notice than external security risks, need more attention.

Let Me Count the Ways

AUTOMATED TRANSFERS - Spyware, Update, Homing

Now before we look at human error/malice. Let's look at the automated ways company sensitive infomation can "Leave the Building". Now there is some distinctions between types of automated data export. First, there is the application "homing" where the new application communicates with the manufacturer's corporate server . Second, and by no means limited to, the concept of spyware, a conscious effort to get your private information without your knowledge.

Spyware developers rely specifically on their programs to collect data and transfer information without your knowledge (hence the term "spy". But this is no news to you and you have probably installed a variety of freeware or application that patrols your machine for such instances.

Unfortunately, the secret data exodus from your computer isn't limited just to spyware. Plenty of your daily office applications also transfer information, and even if the applications are simply checking for program updates, regardless of the motive, the fact that this occurs without your knowledge, is a little unerving. The mere fact that a program can accoplish this is a serious vulnerability in itself. The point being - you don't have enough years in your life to track all of this info. The best you can hope for is to deliniate what is company sensitive and safeguard that information.

Hence, unless you have no Internet access, it's virtually impossible to manually monitor what programs are "homing" and determine what should be authorized and not. As a result, the only practical way of protecting your information is responding in kind, ie., automating the role of identifying what is valuable - demarcing it as such and protecting it from leaving without your permission. ESC has this solution.

MANUAL TRANSFERS

Identity Theft incidents are increasing in an alarming rate. Such incidents are not only embarrassing, but actually cause financial harm to companies. Other drivers that are moving organizations in this direction is outlined in a recent study by IDC {This study, Worldwide Outbound Content Compliance 2005–2009 Forecast and Analysis: Content Security Turns Inside Out (IDC #34260)} which point out the following:

The growing awareness of outbound content compliance has been recently catalyzed by a series of corporate scandals in which customer records, confidential information, and intellectual property were leaked.
An increasing number of organizations are concerned about filtering their outbound email stream for threats such as spam, viruses, and spyware.

Organizations are concerned that they will face legal liability and brand reputation damage if their customers or partners get "infected" by messages they generate.
The need to secure business communication such as financial statements, patient health information (PHI), intellectual property, and other confidential information has fueled the need for secure email solutions.
The threats associated with outbound content compliance apply not only to email but also to instant messaging, peer-to-peer, file transfers, Web postings, and other types of messaging traffic.

Federal and States Governments has issues regulations designed to protect such data:

Sarbanes Oxley,
GLBA,
HIPAA,
CA -SB1386,
CA-AB1950,
CNPI,
Payment Card Industry (PCI) Data Security Standard,
The Patriot Act,

In any modern enterprise, core assets reside in Intellectual Property. In fact, your IP resides in many different digital forms on your Network. That includes customers data, financial reports, business plans, internal memos, technical designs, source code etc. And all of it is only a few clicks away from exposure by a sloppy or a disgruntled employee.

Your confidential content may be transmitted through many different Internet Protocols and through several means: e-mail, instant messengers, web servers, private blogs, hacker tools, spyware and many other applications.

Installing the GTB Inspector on your network would prevent any attempt to transmit confidential data in violation of your security policy.