Identity Finder, which specializes in data discovery and data classification software, announced a new release of its data loss prevention (DLP) platform, Sensitive Data Manager 9.0.
The release adds to the company’s current data management and classification capabilities by introducing custom data discovery capabilities that help alleviate the burden of IT security by allowing organizations to locate their unique sensitive data.
The offering also increases automation of classification and DLP security controls, reaching into cloud environments to further data minimization efforts and manage sensitive data.
The addition of user-driven data classification also allows organizations to take a hybrid approach to integrated DLP management, enabling them to leverage both automated and manual classifications.
“User-friendlies is very important for the aspects that we want or need an end user to interact with the system, however, transparency is far more important,” Gabe Gumbs, vice president of product strategy with Identity Finder, told eWEEK. “It was more important to build a system with an extremely high level of accuracy to effectively lower the burden on the user.”
This release adds new functionality that mitigates the risk of sensitive data breaches, and offers of DLP of highly sensitive and unique company data including Office 365, Sharepoint, Box and DropBox.
User-driven data classification allows employees to add data classification based on set policies and alert them to the sensitivity of their data. Users can search, classify, monitor and protect data within the cloud through direct API calls to storage providers, including Dropbox and Box.
“We saw a need to expose the components of sensitive data as the primary way to address data loss whether through hacking or mishandling,” Gumbs said. “Only by understanding the contents and context of information are we able to make security decisions that can bring about an end to sensitive data loss.”
Other features include the ability to search metadata within applications such as Microsoft Office, Adobe PDF and Alternate Data Streams (ADS) documents, and it also enables users to search within XMP metadata for image file types.
Workflows allow users to define rules, enforce policies and hold users accountable while remediating unprotected sensitive information, and with an intuitive new user interface, businesses can search databases—including any remote or local database server—to determine if there’s a risk of personal information exposure.
“Data management technology will evolve to understand the unique information that is generated by each organization and offer solutions that are tailored to the needs of their business and not just the broad market place,” Gumbs said.