Modern Endpoint Backup Sees Data Leak Before It Hurts

By Ann Fellman, Vice President/Marketing and Enterprise Product Marketing Director, Code42

Picture this: You’re enjoying a beautiful summer Saturday, watching your kid on the soccer field, when your phone rings. It’s work. Bummer. “Hi, this is Ben from the InfoSec team. It appears that John Doe, whose last day is next Friday, just downloaded the entire contents of his work hard drive to an external drive. Given his role, there’s a high probability that it includes confidential and sensitive employee data.”

There goes your Saturday.

It happened to us—it’s probably happened to you

This happened to us at Code42 a few months ago. A longtime employee was coming up on his last day, and innocently wanted to take years of work with him. We’ve all probably done this—grabbed some templates and examples of our work to use in our next chapter—and instead of sorting through years worth of work, it’s just easier to copy the whole drive. Unfortunately, this is against company policy and puts the company at risk. And in this case, there were confidential and sensitive files related to company personnel.

Not all data theft is malicious, but it’s still dangerous

Of the fifty percent of departing employees that take sensitive or confidential data—most are not malicious. Some don’t know the rules; some don’t follow the rules; and most see no harm in their small actions. At Code42, we’re fortunate to have great people, and they have good intentions. But even the best intentions can have terrible consequences, especially when it comes to enterprise data security.

Too often, “innocent” data taken by employees inadvertently includes sensitive corporate data such as financial information, employee data, trade secrets or even customer information. There are risks and costs associated with leaked data; but knowing what was leaked and where it is greatly reduces the risk and damages.

Code42 CrashPlan avenges data theft—saves the weekend

Back to the sunny soccer field, where I might have spent horrible moments dreading the fallout from this particular data pilfer, I make a single phone call and spend no time worrying about the cost of tracking down or trying to recreate lost files or deal with a potential breach.

With Code42 CrashPlan, I have complete certainty that all of this employee’s endpoint data is backed up, down to the minute. And I know our InfoSec team can tell me what the data is, what was copied and where it was copied to—down to the serial number of the external drive.

Modern endpoint backup: Sees what data you have, and it knows where it goes

From there, the resolution is quick and—while it sounds dramatic—painless. A company representative contacts the departing employee, explains that we observed the content of the hard drive has been copied to a drive and requests return of the drive to Code42 on Monday morning. The employee promptly returns the drive.

And the best part of the story, I enjoyed the rest of the weekend, without the threat of data theft clouding the summer sky.

This is the power of modern endpoint backup. No matter where insider threat comes from—malicious lone wolves, employees conspiring with external actors, or well-intentioned, accidental rule-breakers—modern endpoint backup sees it all, in real time.

Download The Guide to Modern Endpoint Backup and Data Visibility to learn more about selecting a modern endpoint backup solution in a dangerous world.