Patent attributes
Methods and systems for Data Leak Prevention (DLP) in a private network are provided. According to one embodiment, information is received from an administrator (i) defining a DLP rule to be applied to packets associated with an upper layer protocol and (ii) defining an action to take when a condition associated with the rule is satisfied. The rule includes a regular expression and/or a string that is configured to detect existence of sensitive information. A packet originated by a host device is received. The packet is determined to be associated with the upper layer protocol. A command, request or method of the protocol is identified that is specified by or represented by the packet. The packet is scanned for sensitive information based on the rule. When the scanning results in a conclusion that sensitive information is contained within the packet, then the defined action is performed.
