Each time a user device is authorized to access a company’s network, the exploitable attack surface increases. With the number of endpoint devices in use growing every day, organizations need to find the balance between productivity and protection on all the devices their employees use.
The right endpoint security solution can help organizations detect suspicious instances of data being moved around inside and outside of an organization. PK Protect provides revolutionary data protection that automatically discovers and protects critical information, even when it moves outside of the organization.
Download this solution overview to learn more about intelligent data discovery and encryption for user devices.
Every Authorized Device Widens the Attack Surface
Each user device permitted onto a network adds exploitable surface, and the number of those devices only increases. The organization’s problem is not choosing between productivity and protection but finding the point where both hold.
Endpoints are also where data leaves visibility fastest. A file copied to a laptop for a presentation is outside every server-side control the moment it lands.
The Manager and the Agents
The endpoint manager is the central hub, integrating with identity providers such as Microsoft Active Directory so that policy follows the user rather than the machine.
Agents are installed on user devices, servers and other assets holding sensitive information. They scan file locations for sensitive data and apply persistent encryption with embedded key management, with key creation, synchronization and exchange happening in the background so that users are not asked to participate.
Smartkeys and Revocable Access
A Smartkey is a unique key generated for a specific file, folder or protected asset. Access is granted and revoked centrally at any time.
The consequence is the part worth understanding. Access can be withdrawn after a file has been shared, copied, renamed, transferred or emailed, because the protection is attached to the asset rather than to the place it was stored. That is what full lifecycle protection means in practice, and it is not achievable with access control alone.
Discovery Before Encryption
Encryption is only as complete as the inventory behind it. Scanning desktops, laptops and servers against mandates, search terms and regular expressions is what determines which files are protected.
Where a file or an email message contains sensitive information, encryption is applied using the organization’s policy-specific method. Nothing depends on a user recognizing that the document they just saved is regulated.
Visibility for IT, Security and Audit
Data security intelligence reporting answers the questions an auditor actually asks: which files were encrypted, which users accessed them, which devices they were on, and where the events took place.
That record is also what makes an incident tractable. A lost laptop becomes a question with an answer rather than an estimate, because the organization knows what was on it and what state it was in.
Working Alongside Existing DLP
Policy management extends to existing data leakage prevention processes and technology rather than replacing them. That distinction matters for organizations that have spent years tuning DLP rules.
Adding data-level encryption underneath those rules protects what DLP cannot inspect and keeps the tuning intact, which is a materially cheaper path than rebuilding detection somewhere else.
It also removes an argument that stalls endpoint programs. Security teams resist adding a second agent, and business teams resist anything that slows a laptop down, so a control that extends existing tooling rather than competing with it is the one that actually gets deployed.