Websense Marries DLP and Web Intelligence

Websense is integrating its Web threat protection technology into the newest version of its data leak prevention software in a bid to both thwart data breaches and help companies create sound policies.

The software, Websense Content Protection Suite v6, marries Websenses URL database and ThreatSeeker malicious content classification technology to new context-based data recognition capabilities to help organizations craft and enforce better data sharing policies for specific users. The product has two key modules—Content Enforcer, which polices the network for data leaks, and Content Auditor, used to locate a networks critical data.

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"Websense identifies data using a technology called PreciseID … across communication channels like SMTP, HTTP, IM, FTP, internal mail, internal printing and generic text analysis for other protocols regardless of port," said Devin Redmond, director of security products and strategy at San Diego-based Websense. "In v6, in addition to monitoring and blocking by the specific data, the solution also blocks based on the user sending the data and the destination that data is being sent to, as well as incorporating a full remediation and incident management workflow."

Unlike other information leak prevention or content filtering tools that enable users to block Web mail and other online applications, Websense Content Protection Suite enables employees to authorize Web site categories they have traditionally blocked, while protecting their data from information leakage.

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"For example," Redmond said, "a customer can specify that confidential information can never go to places like malicious Web sites, blogs or shareware sites and/or can narrow the policy down such that only the owner of the document can send it out at all."

The software also features a graphical interface so users can manage large-scale, multisite and distributed component implementations, and that includes a multiplatform "soft appliance" option aimed at making deployment and management easier, company officials said.

The software is slated to be generally available by August.

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