Axway today announced data leak prevention (DLP) enhancements to the Mail Gate email security appliance’s Policy Engine, enabling digital rights management (DRM) for attachments. Mail Gate will now limit recipients’ ability to alter or to appropriate attachment information by converting inbound and outbound Microsoft Office attachments into password-protected, ‘locked’ PDF documents.
To date, email DLP has seen content filtering policies scan and then encrypt, redirect or block sensitive information in outbound emails and attachments. But there has been no protection of the integrity of this information once beyond an enterprise email gateway. Recipients could print, copy or manipulate Microsoft Office attachments, increasing potential for the altering of contracts, plagiarism of collateral, or doctoring of compliance reports.
According to Osterman Research, typical business users spend 28 percent of their day working in email – more than any other enterprise communications tool. Additionally, 29 percent of emails contain attachments – a large and growing proportion of which are information-rich files in excess of five megabytes.
Mail Gate’s incorporation of DRM into its Policy Engine means senders retain greater control over a document’s integrity, even when sent to partners or customers. PDF documents are protected by 32-byte passwords, established by the sending organization, which remains solely authorized to make document changes. With Mail Gate’s PDF conversion enabled, recipients of a converted, password-protected PDF document will not be able to print, add pages, insert comments or copy and paste content. Additionally, Mail Gate eliminates metadata from outbound documents such as tracked changes, edits or revision history to ensure only desired information reaches recipients.
Joe Fisher, senior VP of product and solutions marketing at Axway. “Axway is the first mover on bringing DRM to email data leak prevention. This means enterprises can rest a bit easier knowing their most sensitive information that must be shared will be much harder to tamper with or illegally appropriate.”
In addition to enhancing the data leak prevention capabilities, Mail Gate has also made multiple enhancements to further improve product usability and performance in areas like improved user reports, message data logging and end-user graphical interface functionality. (Source: Axway/GST)