Customer organisations increasingly seek a global view of data-related risk, especially when information is commercially sensitive, personally identifying, or otherwise must remain confidential.
Chris Roney, writing for Endpoint Protector by CoSoSys – a Netwrix-owned company, noted that security solution sprawl can add to a “visibility gap” across a heterogeneous environment.
“For many, the source code is the absolute heart of the business,” Roney said via the company blog, here. “If your company develops a unique IT product, its source code should be heavily guarded.”
For “many reasons”, guarding source code remained difficult – yet it can be the source code that delivers prime competitive advantage, especially if third parties don’t know how their applications work, Roney pointed out.
“They could use unique algorithms or clever programming tricks, which make them more accurate, faster, or in any way better than the competition,” the blogger said.
Most programming languages require a a compiler to takes the source code and convert it into an application that can run on a PC, be published online, or downloaded and installed in a customer environment – but while popular repositories and revision control systems like Git can be well protected, source code is frequently copied to local computers.
“Probably the biggest threat to your source code is a ‘professional’ who makes their sorry living by stealing from others and then either selling it to the highest bidder or asking for a ransom to not publicise the code.”
That’s why Endpoint Protector by CoSoSys recommends data loss prevention (DLP) technology to fend off potential leaks, breaches and other malicious behaviours.
Endpoint Protector by CoSoSys’s own cross-platform DLP is offered alongside e-discovery and device control. The easiest access to source code is often compromise of endpoints such as laptops.
DLP at an endpoint can allow access to a protected resource but block copy-paste, especially into other applications such as browser windows, messenger apps or email clients, as long as the tool used is good at scanning and identifying source code within files, libraries and systems.
“Efficiency in processing is very important due to the potential need to cover more than just the most sensitive source code fragments,” Roney noted.
Read the full blog post on the Endpoint Protector by CoSoSys website or download this whitepaper on best practice DLP.
( Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay )
