Detect File Copying
Is it possible to detect a user copying files?
This is a tough problem. The computer certainly knows that a user is reading files from the disk into the computer's RAM. Unfortunately, once the data is in RAM, it can't be tracked any further. It might be inside of Microsoft Word and displayed as a document on the screen, it might have been loaded into an FTP application and sent out onto the network, or it might have been loaded into a program that is sending it to the printer. It's just not possible to track the destination of a file once it's been read.
But how can I make sure my sensitive data isn't disappearing?
There are two generic solutions for this.
- Lock the data up (encrypt it) so that you don't need to worry if someone takes your data. Although good in theory, in practice this makes your documents pretty hard to work with. Microsoft has a large infrastructure called Rights Management Services for Microsoft Office files, but getting it going is not a small endeavor.
- Use heuristics to detect that a user is probably copying data. That's what PA File Sight does.
How does it work?
With the Pro or Ultra version of PA File Sight you can be alerted anytime a user reads more than X amount of data (a number of files, or an amount of data) in Y amount of time. For example, it's unlikely that a user would open and read 50 Word documents in a one minute period of time. So if 50 Word documents are read by a single user within 1 minute, you have a pretty good guess that a directory copy just took place.
What else can PA File Sight do?
Besides alerting on possibly file copying operations, PA File Sight can also tell you if someone deletes a file, or if they move a file, including who moved it, and where they moved it to. In addition, you can audit who has loaded or changed files.
We invite you to learn more about PA File Sight and to try the free download.
