THE NEW WORLD OF SECURITY: "The goal is to thwart intellectual property theft, such as a stolen formula or customer list; to comply with government and industry regulations on protecting data; and to enforce end-user computing policies to avoid expensive lawsuits, such as sexual harassment.".

• Author: Miller, Brad
• Position: DATA BREACHES

FOR THOSE employers and business owners who associate desktop-level security agents with an intrusive and even Orwellian sensibility, it is important to remember that recent surveys have found that 85% of responding organizations have had a data-breach event, and more than 90% of those breaches were digital in form, indicating that a significant percentage of employees have not acted responsibly when it comes to the use of the PC they were given by their company to do their job.

In response, some large companies have outlawed personal email use entirely, while other firms struggle to stem information leakage by monitoring communication at the network level. Neither solution offers a realistic or effective means of maintaining workplace morale, maximizing productivity, or minimizing the misuse of sensitive information.

Furthermore, during the past few years, a major shift has occurred regarding privacy concerns in the workplace, reflecting the vulnerable position of those companies and agencies that offer their employees the freedoms associated with personal laptops and unrestricted mobility, with only traditional network security to protect company assets.

The use of a desktop security agent to protect employers and corporations from the very real threat of insider information abuse is well within any company's legal right. At this point, only two states require advanced notification and all 50 states permit it.

The walls of the network perimeter have melted thanks to advances in data communications and wireless technologies. Network level security measures no longer are useful as a means of managing inside threats against confidential information or intellectual property.

Outbound content rarely receives the kind of monitoring it really needs and, as such, users can attach confidential documents to noncompany web mail messages and instant messages with frightening ease. The only way to minimize the dangers posed by email, instant messaging, and person-to-person file sharing is through a desktop agent designed for superior security. Such a desktop agent must be able to manage security threats that no longer are protected by standard network monitoring. These threats are a result of many evolutions in Internet accessibility.

The bad news is that there still are many companies that are resisting change and hanging onto outdated, network-level security measures and, as such, constantly are struggling to keep sensitive data from leaking outside...