My company recently got into a dispute about intellectual property. The lawyers for the other side came back and showed us that employees at our company had sent this information to partners and customers without an NDA. My company now is going to settle the suit; what could we have done better?

Content monitoring and filtering technology is an IP protection tool. It allows companies to locate the roots of IP-sensitive data and information - and implement legal, policy, personnel, process, and technology protections to safeguard it. Protecting IP requires a sophisticated solution that can recognize sensitive content in all of its variants and amorphous forms. To be useful, many companies need the content monitoring solution to incorporate complex intelligence to distinguish circumstances that represent risk from those that do not.

IP concepts provide a means to define - and therefore detect, monitor, and control - unique content, in all its permutations. The ability to monitor by context, such as who sent what, where, when, and how, and to use content variations to account for the amorphous nature of IP, contributes to a company's IP protection. Likewise, for some companies the ability to search an archive and explore the historical context of an incident adds to the depth and value of the protection.

Based on interviews done with customers as part of a recent study, Pro-Tec Data found an adaptive feedback loop is used to address these IP assets:

Companies define their IP, including typical and derivative representations.

Monitoring technology is used to scan the network, including servers, email gateways, and user machines, to discover IP at rest and the circumstances of its use and transmission.

Companies use the results of the discover process to develop IP fingerprinting concepts, which incorporate the circumstances of IP use and transmission and which also distinguish sensitive from non-sensitive information and authorized from unauthorized transactions.

Advanced technology monitors for IP content using multi-vector, concept-based detection and alerts companies to rule violations.

Companies investigate rule violations by searching a capture database, which allows them to understand the historical circumstances of the security incidents.