Deployment Guide › Before You Start using CA DLP › 7. Synchronize the Clocks on Your CA DLP Machines

7. Synchronize the Clocks on Your CA DLP Machines

When an event is captured on a client machine, it is time stamped. This time stamp is preserved when the event is replicated up to the CMS. If a machine is set to the wrong date, incorrect capture dates are saved with any events captured on that machine. For this reason, it is important that all of your CA DLP machines are set to the correct date and local time.

This normally happens automatically. If your CA DLP machines are all members of a domain, their clocks are probably synchronized automatically by a network time server. Machines that are not members of a domain are probably synchronized by an Internet time server.

But if a CA DLP machine does not have a continuous Internet connection, this automatic synchronization may not occur, for example, because a firewall blocks time synchronization. Similarly, if a machine is set to the wrong date set, clock synchronization is blocked.

Therefore, if CA DLP is installed on any machines that are not members of a domain, make sure that the owners of these machines understand the need to keep their machine set to the correct date and time.

Note the following:

• Such problems cannot affect event auditing. When a reviewer updates an event’s audit trail in the Data Management console, the audit entry is always time stamped on the CMS.
• When displaying event capture times, CA DLP automatically takes account of time zone differences. For details about time zone handling, see the Data Management Console online help; search the index for ‘time zones’.