Proofpoint Network Content Sentry

Features:

As enterprises have become increasingly concerned about enforcing outbound email policy violations, defending against leaks of confidential information and ensuring compliance with regulations, they are also realizing the information protection risks presented by other outbound messaging streams including HTTP and FTP traffic. A recent survey by Proofpoint and Forrester Consulting found that about half of companies polled were concerned or very concerned about web-based email as a source of private information leaks. More than 43% shared the same concerns about postings to blogs and other types of message boards.The Proofpoint Network Content Sentry extends Proofpoint's data loss prevention and information protection features to additional outbound message streams including web-based email, blog and message board postings and other HTTP- or FTP-based activity.

Enhanced protection for intellectual property and improved compliance solutions
By adding the Proofpoint Network Content Sentry to your Proofpoint email security software or anti-spam appliance deployment, you can apply the same content security, regulatory compliance and acceptable use policies defined for SMTP-based email to HTTP and FTP protocol-based communications.

• Intellectual property and confidential information protection: In conjunction with the Proofpoint Digital Asset Security™ module, the Proofpoint Network Content Sentry monitors outbound network traffic for any type of confidential asset. Leveraging Proofpoint MLX™ message classification techniques, Proofpoint Digital Asset Security analyzes and classifies confidential documents and then continuously monitors for that information, or parts of that information, in outgoing network traffic. Proofpoint Digital Asset Security can be used to protect hundreds of document types including email messages, text files, word processing files, source code, CAD drawings, spreadsheets and presentation formats.
   
• Privacy protection and regulatory compliance: In conjunction with the Proofpoint Regulatory Compliance™ module, the Proofpoint Network Content Sentry monitors outbound network traffic for a wide array of non-public information including PHI (protected health information including drug names, disease names, patient identifiers and treatment codes as defined by HIPAA), personal identifiers (including US Social Security Numbers and UK National Insurance Numbers) and personal financial information (such as credit card numbers and ABA routing numbers). Proofpoint's "smart identifiers" ensure accurate detection of private information with low false positives.

Robust HTTP and FTP Compliance Solutions
The Proofpoint Network Content Sentry intelligently captures and reconstructs all outbound HTTP and FTP protocol traffic at high data rates. All HTTP posting activity-such as web-based email posting (including webmail services such as MSN Hotmail, Yahoo! Mail, AOL Mail and Google GMail), blog postings, message board submissions, use of web-based file storage systems (such as GMail FS) and other general posting activity-is intercepted and scanned for information leaks and policy violations.

The system monitors both active and passive mode FTP transmissions of binary or text files sent to remote servers. As with HTTP posting, a wide variety of policies can be enforced around FTP activity, including monitoring for specific files, file size limits and detecting FTP transmissions to inappropriate destinations.

Flexible policy definition and incident management
The same interface used to define outbound SMTP-email policies is used for setting Proofpoint Network Content Sentry policies. Each policy can trigger based on specific document type and a customizable document similarity score. HTTP- or FTP-based messages that trigger a policy can be quarantined for further review. Proofpoint's Compliance Incident Manager™ interface makes it easy for business users—such as compliance, security, risk management, HR and other line-of-business managers—to administer their own email and network content security policies, review violations, approve exceptions and monitor incidents through an easy-to-use interface and email-based notification system. The Compliance Incident Manager actively notifies managers of policy violations and associated severity levels, so they can easily and effectively review non-compliant messages and release, reroute, approve or otherwise manage incidents using Proofpoint's graphical user interface.

Learn more about compliance solutions in the healthcare busines.

Learn more about compliance solutions for the financial services industry.

Read more about Proofpoint information protection for personal financial information.

Technology:

Supported protocols
Proofpoint Network Content Sentry captures and analyzes all outbound HTTP and FTP traffic. Detection capabilities include:

HTTP webmail posts including:

• MSN Hotmail
• Yahoo! Mail
• AOL Mail
• Google GMail (webmail as well as Gmail FS File System transfer)
• Lycos webmail
• Network Solutions webmail
• Comcast webmail
• Custom webmail applications

Generic HTTP posts including:

• Web blog postings
• Message board postings
• General HTTP posts, attachments and web form submissions

FTP traffic:

• Transmitted text or binary files
• Supports active and passive mode FTP

Compare:

Enterprise Content Security
Beyond the inbound messaging threats of spam, viruses, and phishing attacks, corporations, universities, and government organizations are looking for messaging security solutions that help them enforce outbound email policies, protect the privacy of customer and employee information, defend against leaks of confidential information, and help them comply with email-related regulations. Proofpoint provides a complete suite of easy-to-configure modules that solve these problems.

Proofpoint's Content Compliance™, Digital Asset Security™, and Regulatory Compliance™ modules for the Proofpoint Messaging Security Gateway and Proofpoint Protection Server represent a complete content security solution for today's enterprise.

Proofpoint's data loss prevention and content security modules

• Proofpoint Content Compliance allows enterprises to define and enforce acceptable-use policies (based on keywords, regular expressions and dictionaries) for message content and attachments.
   
• Proofpoint Digital Asset Security keeps valuable assets and confidential information from leaking outside your organization via email and other network protocols.
   
• Proofpoint Regulatory Compliance protects your organization from liabilities associated with privacy regulations such as HIPAA and GLBA.

Diagram:

Documentation:

Download the Proofpoint Network Content Sentry Datasheet (PDF).