Google Expands Data Loss Prevention for Gmail

Google has expanded its Gmail Data Loss Prevention service. Among other things, ocr for attachments has been improved and administrators can set Count and Confidence parameters. The new functionality is available to Apps for Work Unlimited customers.

In the Admin panel, Google Apps for Work Unlimited administrators can enable optical character recognition for attachments. They can then create lists of words, phrases or numerical patterns that may appear in the attachments and have outgoing mail blocked or quarantined. The ocr functionality can scan jpeg, png, gif and tiff images.

In addition, Google has expanded Data Loss Prevention with new detection policy settings. For example, administrators can set the number of observations for which action must be taken. For example, if an email contains a single credit card number, the risk can be estimated as low, while 100 credit card numbers can automatically trigger an alarm.