You wake up in the middle of night, worrying about the email containing the last review draft of your pending acquisition – which you sent hurriedly this afternoon as you ran late for a meeting. Did you send it to Bob your PR consultant or Bob the journalist who has been asking for an interview? Oh, please, no . . . what if… you have to get up and take a look in your email sent box!
Sound familiar? Just in the past week I’ve received three emails that I shouldn’t have: one with some company’s bug report, one with a spreadsheet of business contacts, and one with an HR report. With email’s auto-filling of addresses, how many of us have not made such a mistake? Some mistakes may have an associated revenue value or provide the basis for an employee law suit, while others may just cause sheer embarrassment. What is true across the board is that each case is very individualized, not subject to a blanket security solution, such as is provided by an anti-virus product. The security required to protect data in these scenarios varies according to the person and the timing. What is private and extremely valuable data for one person may be of no significance to another. What was critically important and confidential yesterday may be public today.
So, we have a choice. Either we just take the risk and end up worrying about it, having to keep our fingers crossed, and sometimes seeing our worst fears realized. Or, we look for a tool that’s flexible enough to head off incidents such as these, one that’s capable of reacting to spontaneous decisions, working in line with current processes, and being effortless to use.
Why haven’t we seen this type of tool? The impact of a personal leak used to be localized and easily controlled compared to the impact of a machine in corporate network getting a virus. With blogging, peer-to-peer social networks, and other Internet technologies, one leak can get totally out of control and easily spread information into the ether, with no one sure who has seen or possesses what was supposed to be confidential. It is time for individuals to have an extremely easy to use tool to put a stop to careless mistakes that result in the loss of data. That is the goal of Personal Fortress.
Tags: confidential information, data leaking prevention, data loss, email, Internet, peer to peer, Personal Fortress, personal leak, private, Security
