Digital Guardian

Solution

The firm developed its data protection platform with OpenText™ Knowledge Discovery to help customers see, analyze, understand, and protect their sensitive data.

“We need to be able to recognize sensitive data by inspecting both the content as well as the context of the data and perform appropriate actions wherever and whenever the data is accessed,” said Tracy Anderson, senior director of development at Fortra.

OpenText Knowledge Discovery helps customers achieve that visibility by recognizing structured and unstructured files operating on multiple systems. Digital Guardian uses the software to scan documents, recognize terminology, and classify structured information—such as credit card numbers, alphanumeric data, customer specifics, and patient/healthcare details. It also allows them to assimilate and analyze multiple datasets.

“We rely on the integration of [OpenText] Knowledge Discovery and its ability to ingest, scan, and classify data,” Anderson explained. “It supports hundreds of languages and is able to leverage key insights within the data itself to locate and identify sensitive data that needs to be protected.”

Results

Removing security blind spots

Data recognition and classification are important steps to guarding big data. Digital Guardian’s platform monitors the movement of sensitive, classified information by deploying customized agents on endpoints running Windows, Linux, and Mac operating systems, along with network agents, sensors, and appliances scanning network traffic. The agents identify and tag sensitive information, then store the tags in the metadata, so it travels with the data. The endpoint agents warn and/or block users from intentionally or unintentionally transmitting classified information outside the company or to external media, such as a removable hard drive or memory stick.

“Our endpoint agents intercept specific operations at the lowest level before the event is allowed to complete.” Anderson said. “We utilize [OpenText] Knowledge Discovery to identify sensitive data, and based on policy rules for different types of data, either allow or block the operation from continuing. The endpoint is a potential blind spot for many organizations; however, our solution covers this vulnerability.

By not requiring complex rules or configurations beforehand, the solution produces practical risk and trend reports. Digital Guardian customers use the reports enabled by OpenText Knowledge Discovery’s software in various ways, such as identifying classified data that an employee may have removed from the company. Customers may implement policy changes in the solution that can eliminate as much as 90 percent of their data loss through proactive, preventative measures.

“Once customers put these preventative controls in place, they can immediately see the effect it has on identifying and blocking the transmission of sensitive data,” Anderson noted. “If they weren’t tracking this before, our customers may be surprised at how many unintentional breaches were occurring within their organization.”

We utilize OpenText Knowledge Discovery to identify sensitive data, and based on policy rules for different types of data, either allow or block the operation from continuing. The endpoint is a potential blind spot for many organizations; however, our solution covers this vulnerability.

In addition to OpenText Knowledge Discovery, Digital Guardian uses OpenText™ Enterprise Security Manager software. Anderson shared, “It is the centerpiece of the security operation center, where information from different security tools come together, and analysts can work with that data to detect problems and respond to them.”

Anderson added, “A major benefit our customers have seen from using OpenText Enterprise Security Manager is the ability to correlate data from multiple security tools, which includes endpoint and network data along with user actions. The insight this data provides allows customers to detect threats much faster and respond to them more quickly through automation and manual operations, leaving the customer environment more secure.”

Digital Guardian’s platform incorporates analytics, tools, and agents that come together brilliantly to improve the security posture of data-driven organizations. It’s perfect for enterprises that may be struggling with standard technologies on the end point that don’t comprehensively identify and secure sensitive and intellectual property information.