Data Discovery using the Retina Network Security Scanner

One of the challenges facing every organization is locating where Personally Identifiable Information (PII) resides on workstations and servers. This data, by nature, is sensitive. However, if this data is not properly being tracked, secured, or even encrypted it can result in data loss. This type of data loss can result in a violation of various industry and government regulatory initiatives such as PCI and HIPAA. The process of finding and reporting where this information resides is called Data Discovery. Many solutions that perform Data Discovery require the deployment of a persistent agent on a host in the form of a DLP (Data Loss Prevention) solution or a network based scanning solution that remotely crawls the file system and opens every file across the network and inspects the contents for PII. Both solutions are less than ideal as they require another agent on the asset and management infrastructure or they need secure access to a remote file system. Furthermore, they additionally require the opening and closing of every file remotely to verify the contents. This can be very time consuming, network intensive, and could result in sensitive data being opened over potentially insecure network paths. With the Retina Network Scanner version 5.19.0 (and higher), BeyondTrust proudly introduces the most flexible solution to enumerate the contents of files on Windows targets utilizing the Retina Local Scanning Service. The Retina Local Scanning Service (RLSS) provides the ability to perform local tasks on the target being scanned. Such tasks include the ability to control and execute console commands. As such, the RLSS is a temporary service that is deployed, performs an action, and then is removed. The use of RLSS adds greater flexibility to the type and depth of information that Retina can gather. RLSS functionality now includes the ability to audit for Personally Identifiable Information (PII) on remote targets. This functionality is supported at the Retina audit level and supports the following personal information:

If Personally Identifiable Information is discovered, the exact PII string is not written back to the Retina Network Security Scanner User Interface or Retina CS (will require version 4.5; coming soon). This is intentional. Consider recording the finding and spreading the discovered PII across the network (due to the Data Discovery itself) and storing it again in yet another solution. The Data Discovery process itself made the PII data leak situation worse. Instead, Retina provides full details of the filename and path and the type of content that was discovered. This is illustrated below: The Retina Network Security Scanner has solved the problem of data discovery in a more secure and efficient method than the most common tools on the market. Using the advanced dissolvable scanning capabilities of RLSS, a vulnerability assessment scan can now find sensitive data, report on the asset, and identify the file, path, and type of data discovered. This answers the question of where my sensitive data is at rest and helps meet regulatory initiatives that require the identification and protection of personally identifiable information. Watch the product video now > For more information on the Retina Network Security Scanner or Retina CS, please click here.