RIVERSIDE, Calif. — Security concerns for credit unions have evolved to include what's going out as much as what's coming in, and at Altura Credit Union, a little electronic appliance is making sure that doesn't include account numbers or other compromising information.
The $866 million CU is using the Websense Content Protection Suite to analyze and track the content and movement of data in its network, with an eye toward preventing unwanted leaks.
"As an industry, we've done a great job keeping people from the outside getting in, with intrusion detection systems and multiple firewalls, and that's all fine and good," said Glen Chrzas, Altura's vice president of technology. "Now we have to focus on protecting what's going out."
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The solution from San Diego-based Websense is an appliance, a box containing software that monitors data as it attempts to travel inside or outside the organization, identifies who is using it and how it's used, and can stop protected information and files from leaving the system, whether it be by printer or e-mail.
"The product has been designed to help our customers find sensitive information on their network, classify it by sensitivity under GLBA and other policies, and set up and administer policies over how that information can be used or sent," said Devin Redmond, director of the security products group at San Diego-based Websense.
Websense recently closed on its acquisition of data-security specialist PortAuthority and Chrzas says he had been working with that company's products for five years before he joined Altura.
"We know that about 80% of data breaches are accidental, insider type opportunities," he said. "And we have all these policies in place geared toward protecting member information, but you have to have some meat behind them. This is our way of being proactive."
Chrzas said the system delays e-mails by less than 10 seconds, even though it must screen more than 1.5 million records in its Symitar core database for potential disclosure problems. When an e-mail is flagged, it's sent to the IT managers, who find that often the problem originated with the member him or herself.
"Most of the times when we have a hit on the system, it's because the member sent things like an account number or something like that on it and the credit union staff is trying to reply. What we do is simply X-out part of the account number and send it on, in that case," Chrzas said.
The system also can check entire blocks of text. Chrza has tested it in various ways. For instance, he's protected a four-page document, took one paragraph of that document and tried to e-mail it and was stopped. He said he tried renaming the document then taking a paragraph and e-mailing it, and the same thing happened.
Chrzas said, looking ahead, the credit union is considering applying the Websense filtering technology to the next generation of electronic communications, instant and text messaging.
"As Generation Xers are turning to Generation Yers, that's how they're communicating," he said. "No one e-mails. So we're looking at turning on those protocols here, too, and filtering those communications right through the Websense product, just like we do with e-mail now." –[email protected]
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