Policy Guide › Scanning Files and Other Items › How Does the FSA Scan Stored Data?

How Does the FSA Scan Stored Data?

The File Scanning Agent (FSA) integrates CA DataMinder with the stored data used by your organization. It is designed to scan, analyze and apply appropriate policy controls to:

• Files saved in local or remote file systems
• Items stored in Exchange Public Folders
• Items hosted on Microsoft SharePoint sites
• Text entries and documents stored in SQL Server or Oracle databases.

The FSA must be deployed in conjunction with CA DataMinder policy engines and a policy engine hub. It uses Data At Rest triggers to analyze and apply policy to scanned items. It only extracts text content if it is required for policy processing, making the scans highly efficient.

When a scanning job runs, an event is generated for each scanned item that causes a Data At Rest trigger to fire. All file events captured by the FSA can be viewed alongside existing e‑mail, Web and IM events using the iConsole or Data Management console.

FSA: scanning procedure for files

The FSA (1) scans target folders (2) and checks files against records in the Scanned File database and, optionally, a NIST database (3). New or changed files are passed to a policy engine (4) for processing. Data At Rest triggers analyze the files and, if required, apply smart tags (5). When processing is complete, the policy engine calls back to the FSA with the processing results. Finally, the FSA then implements any applicable control actions, such as deleting specific files or copying them to a new location (6).