Symantec protects Office 365 with DLP and new data rights management

Symantec announced new enhancements to its Data Loss Prevention (DLP) technology to protect information in Office 365. With Symantec DLP, data is protected whether at rest or in transit, on-premises or in the cloud, and everywhere it flows through a management console.

Monitoring and protecting data in the cloud generation is a complex task, and GDPR and other similar privacy regulations have raised the stakes on data security, privacy and compliance. As such, companies must work to ensure that data such as PII, intellectual property, or source code is protected no matter where it is shared.

In the cloud generation, this is more difficult than ever, as enterprises are adopting SaaS applications, including Office 365, that require data to move between endpoints, cloud and third parties such as partners, vendors or contractors.

Symantec provides functionality for visibility, protection and control of data no matter where it lives or travels. Users can now share data through Office 365 with employees, partners or contractors.

As an integral element of Symantec’s Integrated Cyber Defense Platform, Symantec’s DLP technology leverages a combination of detection technologies backed by machine learning to classify personal information, including Sensitive Image Recognition (SIR) with Optical Character Recognition (OCR).

When data is shared with third parties, identity-based encryption and digital rights are enabled to classify and protect and track the data. Protected organizations will have visibility of where their data is shared and who is accessing it, with the ability to revoke access if needed.

This Information Centric Security (ICS) approach focuses protection around data and reinforces GDPR controls and other compliance best practices.

New capabilities in Symantec DLP 15.1:

• Automatic protection for emails and attachments in Office 365 and Gmail with identity-based encryption and digital rights management. This is delivered via integration of Symantec DLP and Symantec Information Centric Encryption (ICE) to protect and track data shared with third parties.
• Ability to read classification tags that were manually applied to files and emails and protect based on the assigned level of sensitivity.
• Easier monitoring for GDPR compliance-related data risk with the use of new DLP in-built policy templates and risk-based reporting capabilities provided via Symantec Information Centric Analytics (ICA).

“As enterprises migrate to Office 365 and other SaaS applications, they risk a huge potential of data loss, which is made even more complex in the face of increasing data regulations such as GDPR,” said Nico Popp, senior vice president of Information Protection, Symantec.

“Information Protection is a critical part of an organization’s integrated cyber defense strategy in this cloud generation environment. By taking a holistic approach, we can better protect data as it moves across endpoints, networks and applications.”

Within the Symantec Integrated Cyber Defense Platform, DLP integrates with many Symantec technologies to provide data protection across control points. This is accomplished with a single solution and centralized policies for protection extended across endpoints, network, IaaS, SaaS and email.

The integrated solution aims to lower total cost of ownership, increase data protection efficacy and minimize false positives. Symantec DLP is integrated with Proxy, CASB, email and user and entity-based analytics (UEBA) solutions to deliver end-to-end data security for enterprises worldwide.