We use many different services offered by Google for personal and corporate purpose. The confidentiality, integrity and accuracy of the information is very important. Keeping security factor in mind, Google has recently introduced a new scanning feature called Optical Character Recognition (OCR) that can prevent the leak of confidential data.
Last year Google had introduced Data Loss Prevention (DLP) service for email texts. This year they have come up with some security prevention method OCR that scan attachments. For better security, Google has introduced this feature to avoid leakage of company’s confidential data. However, this feature is available only for paid Google Apps.
Here is what has been posted on the official Google blog post:
Sensitive information can reside not just in text documents, but in scanned copies and images as well. With the new OCR enhancement, DLP policies can now analyze common image types, and extract text for policy evaluation.
What action can OCR perform to prevent confidential data?
OCR can scan for attachments and analyze common image types. In the meantime it also searches for data such as social security numbers or passwords in the attachments. It scans the whole document and matches keywords to the admin’s approved blacklist.
For Data Loss Prevention (DLP) service, Google has launched a set of content detectors that allow the admin to easily scan emails for personally identifiable information (PII). Here, several countries have been included and use of this will provide “better coverage for HIPAA data”.
There are two detection parameters that have been introduced to take more control over the content detection:
1. Count parameter– Using Count Parameter customers can set up a different DLP policy based on whether a message contains individual or bulk PII.
2. Confidence parameter– Confidence Parameter helps the customer to tighten or loosen detection criteria depending upon as per their need.
Here are the new features launching details:
1. Release track: Launching to both Rapid release and Scheduled release
2. Rollout pace: Full rollout (1-3 days for feature visibility)
3. Impact: Admins only
4. Action: Admin action suggested/FYI
Later this year Google is also planning to bring DLP to Google Drive to provide extra security measures.
Image Source: Featured Image, Image1, Image2
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