Deployment Guide › Third-Party Integration › Integration Models › Comparison of Ingestion Methods into CA DLP

Comparison of Ingestion Methods into CA DLP

Each archive integration model supports three methods for ingesting e‑mails into the CMS (methods a, b and c). In each case, CA DLP (either an integration agent or the Universal Adapter) processes the emails to be ingested and outputs them to EVF files or to policy engines. Each method has its own benefits, and you must choose the method most appropriate for your organization:

a. Output to Policy Engines

The integration agent or UA outputs emails using a policy engine hub to a policy engine. Unlike the EVF-based ingestion methods, ingestion method a. has no additional storage overhead. This method has the following benefits:

• Smart tags stored with emails in archive: It allows you, using policy engines, to add smart tags to emails before they are stored in your archive.

  The UA can automatically assign smart tags to emails before they are archived. But if your archive integration uses the External Agent API, your own integration software must handle any smart tags returned from the External Agent, saving them as properties of the emails before they are archived.

• Smart tags stored with email events in CMS: You can also store smart tags with the corresponding email events on the CMS. This allows rapid and efficient filtering when using CA DLP consoles to search for archived events.

b. Output to EVFs, then Ingested by Import Policy

The integration agent or UA converts archived emails to event (EVF) files. These EVFs are saved in a cache, from where they are retrieved by Event Import and passed to a policy engine for processing. This method has the following benefits:

• Smart tags stored with email events in CMS: As with method a, you can store smart tags with email events when they are saved on the CMS.
• Decouples archiving from ingestion: Saving emails in your archive and ingesting the corresponding events into CA DLP are performed as two separate processes. This lets you archive emails as soon as possible while scheduling ingestion for periods of low network activity. This is particularly useful if complex policy processing is required.

  However, because ingestion method b. relies on an interim EVF cache you must add fault-tolerance to the cache by implementing regular backups.

c. Output to EVFs, then Ingested Directly

The integration agent or UA converts archived emails to event (EVF) files. These EVFs are saved in a cache, from where they are subsequently imported directly onto the CMS by Event Import. This method has these benefits:

• High ingestion rates: Because no policy processing is required, this ingestion method is potentially the fastest.
• Decouples archiving from ingestion: As with method b, archiving and ingestion into CA DLP are two separate processes. This allows you to schedule ingestion for periods of low network activity.

  However, ingestion method c. does not allow smart tags to be assigned to the ingested emails. And like method b, you must add fault-tolerance to the cache by implementing regular backups.