This is a cloud-based SaaS product with agents at the endpoints. It is unabashedly a DLP tool and it does that quite well. Management is done through a web-based management console. The upshot is that no hardware is necessary to run a management server.
Normally, our first task would have been to download the agents, but they were provided in our review package. The agent is downloaded from the machine to be protected. However, we could have pushed out our agents to an enterprise had we wished to. We then went to the management console - which Somansa calls the DLPCenter - and started browsing through it. Our first stop was policies.
Privacy-I performs discovery and detection according to policies. Once you have registered a user and the user's endpoint through the agent, the tool will scan through the device to discover whatever your policies determine needs to be protected. In addition to the usual credit card numbers and Social Security numbers - the expected starting point for sensitive data - you will find all sorts of possibilities, such as customer data, financial information, employee data and design information.
We picked a policy that we thought would be tough to enforce: source code. There are a lot of coding formats that developers use, so our question was: How will the agent know that there is source code on the computer? The answer is that you create a set attributed for detection and the agent - with the help of the system in the cloud - learns what to look for. There is a bit more to it than that but you have a large collection of customizable detection rules, patterns, formats, attributes and applications that you can define very simply.
Once you have everything that needs to be discovered defined, you can run discover policies and pinpoint sensitive documents that meet your specifications. Next, we looked at the policies for managing the functionality of the endpoint itself. You can block or allow copying, printing, applications running and how removable media is handled. These policies all can be applied to the devices in the network as you wish.
The system has a good approach to managing incidents. Not only can you as the administrator make decisions about a violation, you can delegate so the result is a workflow for handling incidents. For example, you might delegate HR-related incidents to the director of HR.
There are a lot of initial policy settings and discoveries that are necessary. However, the documentation is excellent in this regard. The quick-installation guide is profusely illustrated with annotated screen shots, and the layout is a formal set of defined tasks in the order you need to get them rolling.
Reporting is excellent and, this being pretty much a pure-play DLP product, we were quite pleased to see the flexibility that the administrator has - both in deployment and ongoing management and incident response. We especially liked the PC Discover Dashboard, an at-a-glance view of what is happening now and what the historical trends are. It is very clear and after looking at its flashing lights of green, yellow, orange or red, there are no questions about your system's status.
Support is included and is offered on an eight-hours-a-day/five-days-a-week basis. It consists of email and phone support. The website is a marketing site and there is no obvious support portal - which we found disappointing. The management console is well laid-out and the functionality is exactly what we would expect from a competent DLP product.
