IronPort Systems, a Cisco business unit that develops anti-spam and anti-spyware appliances, today announced the introduction of fully integrated data loss prevention (DLP) and encryption capability for e-mail.
These built-in features help streamline the prohibitively complex task of protecting sensitive corporate information. The new functionality is included in IronPort's AsyncOS operating system, which powers IronPort's industry-leading e-mail security appliances.
The introduction of this DLP functionality into the IronPort appliances gives corporate IT teams a single, fully integrated solution that combines the traditional e-mail security functions of spam and virus filtering with workflow-based functions of policy creation, content scanning, and message encryption, quarantining and/or archiving.
Utilising existing security infrastructure
E-mail has become the primary communication avenue for organisations of all sizes. A few years ago, IDC reported that 84% of data leakage was generated internally, by employees, predominantly via e-mail and Web communications.
"Information has become the world's new currency," said Brian Burke, research manager for IDC's Security Products program. "Today, nearly all corporate information exists in electronic form, accessible to almost any employee.
"Additionally, e-mail has become the de facto filing system for much of this information, making it even more critical to protect the outbound flow of messages." Whether private information is deliberately or accidentally leaked, the ramifications of data loss are severe: violation of compliance regulations, erosion of customer trust and destruction of brand equity.
As a result, executives are focused more than ever on rapidly deploying a solution to address data loss and to do it in an easy-to-administer, unobtrusive manner. IronPort's new capabilities enable its more than 12 000 customers worldwide to utilise their existing anti-spam appliances to help combat the data loss problem.
"We play a key role for our customers as they look to stop spam and viruses from entering their network. They also look to us to help them address the emerging DLP requirements they are facing," said Tom Gillis, SVP of Marketing at IronPort Systems. "We are happy to deliver a DLP solution that embraces their existing e-mail security appliances while also providing the usability, flexibility and management they've grown to expect from IronPort."
Integrated encryption
The cornerstone of an effective DLP solution is automatic encryption as a remediation option for situations where sensitive information needs to be transmitted outside the organisation.
IronPort now offers encryption capabilities using IronPort's proven PXE encryption technology directly integrated on the appliance. Incoming and outgoing mail can now be encrypted and decrypted with no additional hardware required to filter, route and deliver messages with security.
Based on the policies, outbound messages are detected and automatically encrypted on the appliance. "The ability to accurately scan nearly anything is a critical competency. Content monitoring tools look at the content, scan and detect sensitive data, and mitigate risk through automated blocking or encryption of outgoing messages - based on policy requirements," said Bradley Hunter, Director of Technology Solutions for the American Hospital Association Solutions. "Thus, IronPort's e-mail security encryption products have the exclusive endorsement of the American Hospital Association."
The nature of IronPort's e-mail encryption solution ensures users can send and receive encrypted messages without any IT intervention. Recipients of secure messages do not need to install any proprietary software in order to decrypt and open secure messages, regardless of which mail client they use. And unlike legacy public-key based encryption schemes, there is no need to pre-exchange encryption keys before sending messages, making this the ideal encryption solution for ad hoc business-to-business or business-to-consumer e-mail.
By adopting the Cisco Registered Email Service to manage message credentials, customers can be sending encrypted e-mail in just a matter of minutes, with minimal management of encryption capabilities. "One of the things I love about IronPort is having just one device to handle all of my security, DLP and encryption needs," said Dave Goodman, Chief Technical Officer of Hudson Advisors, a global real estate asset management firm.
"Given how easy it is to deploy and administer, it really is a set-and-forget experience for pervasive encryption to make sure we comply with all of the worldwide regulations via policy enforcement."
Data loss prevention made easy
Corporations around the world are increasingly aware of the need to protect their sensitive information. Whereas existing DLP solutions require additional hardware and new software to configure their monitoring solutions, IronPort customers can instead add DLP capabilities with a click of a mouse.
The IronPort solution encompasses everything an enterprise IT team needs to begin to deploy DLP. Content scanning capabilities include keyword and smart identifier matching, plus pre-populated regulatory as well as customised dictionaries that can scan all major content types, including e-mail message bodies plus Microsoft Office Document attachments, as well as hundreds of other attachment types.
Remediation actions include message quarantining, encryption, archiving, notification etc. All of these capabilities are wrapped up under IronPort's Web-based Email Security Manager policy management tool.
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