Compliance promotes information leakage detection.

After years of focusing mostly on protecting themselves against external threats, organizations are becoming acutely aware of the internal threat of information leaks, according to a new IDC study. This awareness is driven mainly by recent information-intensive regulations that require organisations to maintain the integrity of customer and employee private information, as well as sensitive corporate digital assets. In addition, several technology and business trends, such as the growing exposure to instant messaging and peer-to-peer applications, and the proliferation of mobile devices in corporate environments further intensify the potential for data loss, spurring organizations to establish best practices to mitigate these risks.

The study, which analyzes emerging technologies and the start-up companies bringing them to market, explores different approaches aimed at preventing unauthorized delivery of sensitive information via network and desktop channels, and provides an overview of the latest market dynamics and future scenarios.

Key findings include:

* More vendors are moving to provide prevention capabilities rather than detection-only to meet customer regulatory compliance requirements.

* Network-based solution providers are increasingly partnering with email encryption providers to create a comprehensive outbound messaging security offering.

* Convergence between desktop and network solutions has already begun and will intensify over the near term.

* ILD&P solutions are expected to be integrated into existing functional markets such as messaging security, content management, and endpoint security.

www.idc.com