Palisade Systems CEO Christian Renaud will be speaking on a panel in West Des Moines, Iowa for the Des Moines Business Record/Hanser and Associates 2010 survey of business use of social media.  If you are reading this, then you already know that Palisade Systems leverages social media extensively in communicating with our customers, vendors, and press/analysts.  If you plan to be in the area, this should be a worthwhile use of your time.

You can register here.

When it comes to data loss prevention (or data leakage prevention), people think about the typical industries that deal with compliance issues - healthcare with HIPAA or education with FERPA or insurance and banking with PCI compliance.

The reality is that those are the industries that we see the most activity in for Palisade Systems, but there are many industries out there that have data loss that do not realize it is happening. Now the key issue is that most data loss does not occur out of malicious intent, but unintentional mistakes. People attach documents in email, there is not secure email in a corporation, details accidentally sent out over instant message ... those types of mistakes. Nothing purposely bad, but it happens.

Two recent events bring this to light for both law firms and public relations firms. 

From the law industry, one survey noted that 41 percent of workers who switch jobs take sensitive data. Another noted that redundancy might lead to more data leakage, but ethics are on the rise.

From the FBI, a recent report noted that public relations and law firms are both more susceptible to data leakage due to hacking; the scheme, though, is related to email through phishing attempt.s

What these examples show us is that a comprehensive data loss prevention solution can help corporations protect themselves, their employees and more importantly, their clients. With a system in place, the law firms and PR firms can catch emails that are sent out that should not be going to inappropriate contacts. A lot of secure data is passed back and forth between clients and firms - new hires, mergers & acquisitions, strategic planning - and in the wrong hands, that information can be used for market manipulation or worse. 

What this means is that companies need to be diligent. They need to make sure that they have standards in place, that the computers and servers are fully protected, and that data is not being leaked or lost.