As
the reports of companies losing customer data continue to pile
up, privacy protection is becoming a top-of-mind issue, both for
customers, who naturally don't want their personal information
falling into the wrong hands, and companies, who are suffering
real damage to their brand, customer loyalty and bottom line.
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Over the past few years the proliferation and misuse
of personal information has reached an intolerable state
with both consumers and legislators alike. As more and
more privacy incidents occur, and as identity theft
and fraud continue to make headlines, consumers are
likely to base their decisions on who to do business
with upon how much trust they have in a business's ability
to protect their private information. |
In October
2006, the Ponemon Institute examined about 135 companies
that had recently experienced data loss incidents and benchmarked
their experiences.
The Ponemon research was able to put
numbers to the costs associated with lost customer data.
This benchmark study, found that the average additional
spending that resulting from a single data breach reached
$5 million and rose as high as $50 million for one organization.
The average total recovery costs were $140 per lost customer
record.
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Learn more about products that can drastically reduce the risk of
data loss.
Discovering exposed confidential information
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Using
high speed scanning technology to identify private information
in stored data files is the first step towards proactive information
governance. Once private information is discovered, protective
actions can be taken to protect the information and minimize
the threat of a data loss incident. Lost laptops and stolen
desktop and servers are only part of the over all equation
that can cost an organization millions in direct and indirect
expenses. Computers are often discarded with their hard drives
intact and removable media is commonly disposed of insecurely
or misplaced all together - both of which may contain personal
information.
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Encrypting confidential information
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Data encryption technology utilizes encryption algorithms
to secure data against unauthorized disclosure. Data Encryption
allows for the encryption of an entire hard drive or individual
files, on laptops, workstations and servers, to deliver a
high level of security for confidential data at rest.
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Monitoring data-in-motion
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Continuously monitoring network traffic for the presence of
unencrypted personal and confidential information is key to
protecting customer data. Detection of privacy policy violations
takes place at wire-speed with real-time alerting and preventative
blocking measures being triggered instantly at the time of
detection. Details of the violation are reported and typically
include source IP, the destination IP, the exact personal
information identified and how it was being transferred.
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Protecting confidential e-mail
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Public key encryption is the method that most e-mail encryption
applications use to secure the contents of an e-mail. Anyone
who intercepts and attempt to read an encrypted e-mail will
only see meaningless gibberish. Securing e-mail in transit
as it leaves your corporate network is essential in securing
confidential date send via e-mail.
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Data-in-Motion
Prevent confidential information "leaks".
Data-at-Rest
Find and protect confidential information stored
on latops, workstations and servers.
E-mail
Encryption
Send confidential information securely via e-mail.
Disk
Encryption
Encryption for individual files or whole disk.
e-Discovery
Discover confidential information stored throughout
your network.
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