To protect confidential information, existing access controls must be augmented with an inspection capability that can actually monitor outbound network traffic, detect unauthorized attempts to transfer confidential content and intercept them.

To do this accurately and with minimal false positives, the content protection solution must capture and store a representative signature of the content to be protected. It then compares this signature, at wireline speeds, to content being transmitted on the network. If it detects a match, it can then invoke the appropriate user-defined policy such as logging, quarantining and/or blocking. Traditionally, digital documents have been compared using hashes of entire files. Sufficient for detecting exact file matches, this method is inadequate for the multitude of ways that content is used and transmitted today. The digital workflow of today's enterprises requires a content fingerprinting methodology that:

• Reliably and accurately detects derivatives and excerpts of confidential content in various formats and message protocols.
• Fingerprints all languages including those with non-Roman scripts (ex: Japanese, Chinese).
• Can be implemented to protect content at all potential leakage points.