Deployment Guide › Content Registration › About Content Registration (Fingerprinting)

About Content Registration (Fingerprinting)

The Content Registration feature in CA DLP, also known as fingerprinting, enables you to take 'fingerprints' of sensitive documents that you want to protect. In effect, you can register the content of these documents so that they can be quickly recognized if a user tries to copy or send them or when CA DLP runs a file scan. CA DLP can then apply appropriate policy controls.

These fingerprints represent unique document signatures and are made available to CA DLP policy engines and endpoint agents. When CA DLP analyzes a file, it can quickly determine whether the file matches a known fingerprint and apply policy controls to that file. For example, it can block a fingerprinted document from being sent as an email attachment or copied to a USB device. It can even detect if a document or email contains sections of text copied from a protected file; see the note below.

The key advantage of fingerprinting is that it is quick and easy to roll out. No sophisticated policy changes are required. Instead of defining complex document classifications in the user policy, you can register the content of the files you want to protect.

Fingerprinting is also the most efficient way to protect documents with highly specialized text content, such as source code, or files with little text content, such as CAD drawings, graphics saved in a spreadsheet, or multimedia files.

Note: The ability to detect text extracts copied from a fingerprinted document is provided by Text Detection content agents. Text Detection agents are only available in CA DLP 12.5 if you have deployed the 'Partial Text Agents for Content Registration' patch (RS25484). This patch is available on the CA DLP Solutions & Patches page of CA Support Online: support.ca.com.