Introducing DocAve Content Shield

​All organizations must abide by laws and internal policies that dictate how to manage data. So, what do I mean by “all”? These policies apply to all business units, all regions and, most importantly, in all technologies and operations deployed – including Microsoft SharePoint.

For any fan and follower of the SharePoint landscape, it truly is a beautiful thing to see users adopt the platform with open arms and contribute content. However, as many architects know, SharePoint can quickly become the Wild West if it isn’t regulated. Content may be uploaded at a sudden and unprecedented rate, or with overwhelming file sizes that can slow SharePoint to a crawl. Non-compliant content may make its way in and, worse yet, be posted to the absolute wrong location (e.g. an external facing web page). Of course, any violations carry the possibility of being fined, jailed, and losing the confidence – and business – of your clients. Bearing all of this in mind, there are three questions that come to mind: 1. How can IT administrators ensure optimal use of their SharePoint infrastructure? 2. How can compliance officers mitigate risk within SharePoint? 3. How can large-scale environments comply with multiple, complex regulations including – but certainly not limited to – HIPAA, Sarbanes Oxley, and FERPA? I’m excited that the newest release of DocAve Content Shield, generally available today, provides the answers to these three questions and enables you to proactively enforce information governance for your SharePoint environment. DocAve Content Shield is best understood in the prism of this three-stage process: · What am I looking for? · How do I find it? · Take action. OK, so those three stages sound simple enough. Let’s take a look under DocAve Content Shield’s hood to see how it gets the job done. What am I looking for? DocAve Content Shield uses three dictionaries to scan content, metadata, tags, and titles: · Keywords: Search for collections of keywords and/or phrases to quickly and easily implement profanity filters or implement organization-specific ‘dirty-word’ policies. · Regular Expressions: Detect patterns within content and scan with increased flexibility and accuracy. You can quickly and easily stop the upload of social security numbers, credit card numbers, and vehicle identification numbers. DocAve Content Shield allows you to also produce specific expressions that are specific to your business needs. · File Types: Ensure that non-compliant content isn’t uploaded into specific SharePoint locations. DocAve Content Shield’s File Type dictionaries ensure that simple extension changes will not bypass filters. These three dictionary options grant tremendous flexibility when it comes to adapting to complex compliance or administrative needs. How do I find it? By being so tightly integrated into SharePoint Central Administration, DocAve Content Shield can utilize both real-time and scheduled filters. You can configure policies to detect content the moment it is uploaded, or schedule sweeps of your environment so that you optimize system resources and ensure that you do not disrupt business productivity. Take Action! Of course the most important thing to do is to act when the non-compliant data has been located. You must quickly block the most severe violations outright or quarantine others for administrative review. DocAve Content Shield now provides Risk Reports and Summaries in addition to an enhanced e-mail reporting system, which allows compliance officers to receive alerts on non-compliant data without having to access SharePoint or Central Administration. Meanwhile, administrators can focus on ensuring infrastructure operates at peak efficiency. In the end it is clear that DocAve Content Shield helps ensure SharePoint compliance, and can save administrators and compliance officers hours – if not days – of manual investigation and management. What are the pain points you encounter in terms of compliance today? Leave any comments below – I’d love to hear from you!