How Fortra Detects Data

Overview

While there are several methods of classifying and identifying data within the data protection industry, DDE provides the most robust and flexible data detection tools available to the market today. Many of the Fortra tools incorporate advanced Machine Learning (ML) capabilities and enable customers to quickly and accurately detect and protect their sensitive data. Fortra calls the combined data classification and identification tools the Fortra's Data Detection Engine (DDE).

Business Impact

Businesses that are serious about data protection should choose a data detection solution that is flexible and powerful enough to fit into day-to-day workflows and can be adapted to adhere to existing data security policies. If you must revise and downgrade your policies in order to match the capabilities of your data security solution, you’re doing yourself and your customers a disservice.

The Fortra Solution

The Fortra's Data Detection Engine (DDE) provides a range of data detection tools, which, when used in conjunction, build the most robust security programs available to our customers.

1. Regex, a.k.a. regular expressions, is a sequence of characters that define a search pattern. This method of search inspects the data character-by-character looking for a pattern that matches the search pattern. Most data protection organizations stop here when it comes to data detection methodology.
2. Smart Regex pre-processes data into tokens such as words or numbers which allows for more targeted regex scans of well-formed sensitive data for large documents with repeated search queries. The pre-processing helps the solution focus and can improve performance dramatically.
3. Automated Categorization powered by machine learning leverages machine learning to recognize a topic by correlating words in a document that are indicative of said topic. This depends on a model that was trained from a corpus of documents, sorted by topic.
4. Fortra's Data Classification Suite Data Detection Engine (DCS DDE) powered by machine learning also uses a type of machine learning called deep learning to categorize data. DCS DDE doesn’t consider the topic, but rather scans through content focusing on finding PII (personal identifiable information). This uses both words and the context of those words surrounding it to reduce false positives, and focuses on PII, PHI (personal health information), and PFI (personal financial information).

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The Outcome

DDE is flexible enough to let organizations quickly deploy a solution that is “right sized” for today’s needs yet can evolve with growing and changing requirements. DDE, the most robust data detection solution available today, is embedded in all Fortra's Data Classification Suite (DCS) solutions to ensure access to best-in-breed data protection and security for all our customers.