Auditor system
View Patent ↗An auditing system and method for analyzing email, including capturing email transferred over a network and transferring the email to a data analyzer. The email can be encrypted for safe transfer to the analysis location. Once the email is delivered to the analysis location, it is decrypted and the analysis process begins. The analysis of the email includes scanning the email for specific search terms found in a lexicon and then identifying trends based on scanning results.
1. A method comprising:
receiving, at a data analyzer, captured email over a network, the captured email being communicated between a sender and an intended recipient through the network;
analyzing the captured email including:
scanning the captured email for search terms defining personal or confidential information, and
identifying trends based on the personal or confidential information contained in the captured email including, after the scanning, evaluating occurrences in the captured email of the personal or confidential information and determining the nature and amount of personal or confidential information passing through the captured email; and
identifying, based on the identified trends, one or more security-related protocols for securing future communications between the sender and the intended recipient wherein the one or more security-related protocols are different than protocols used to send communications between the sender and the recipient that were included in the captured email.
2. The method of claim 1 , where receiving the captured email includes copying the captured email for analysis.
3. The method of claim 2 , wherein receiving the captured email includes receiving a sampling of the captured email.
4. The method of claim 2 , wherein receiving the captured email includes receiving a selected ratio of all the captured email.
5. The method of claim 2 , further comprising encrypting the captured email and decrypting the encrypted email before analysis.
6. The method of claim 1 , further comprising receiving the captured email from and transferring the captured email to a server.
7. The method of claim 1 , wherein scanning the captured email includes scanning one or more attachments contained in the captured email.
8. The method of claim 1 , wherein analyzing the captured email includes:
identifying one or more categories of the personal or confidential information; and
storing the identified categories of personal or confidential information without storing the personal or confidential information.
9. The method of claim 1 , further comprising identifying the personal or confidential information with the search terms.
10. The method of claim 1 , wherein:
the search terms have an associated mask, the mask being a filter used to include or exclude values from the search terms based on a predefined criteria; and
analyzing the captured email includes searching the email for both the search terms and the associated mask of the search terms.
11. The method of claim 10 , wherein the mask defines a specified format of digits.
12. The method of claim 10 , wherein the mask defines a nine digit format for a social security number.
13. The method of claim 1 , where identifying the one or more security-related protocols includes identifying information for developing one or more encryption protocols for securing a network that processes the captured email.
14. The method of claim 1 , where identifying the one or more security-related protocols includes identifying information for developing one or more encryption protocols for securing the future communications.
15. The method of claim 1 , wherein scanning the captured email includes scanning the captured email for search terms defining personal or confidential information that are stored in a lexicon, the lexicon having one or more categories each associated with a different class of personal or confidential information.
16. The method of claim 1 wherein the one or more trends relate to identification of a specific type of information that has been located when scanning, or individuals, context or types of communications associated with one or more of the occurrences.
17. A method of analyzing email, comprising:
identifying a copy of an email transferred over a network;
encrypting the copy of the email;
transferring the encrypted copied email to a data analyzer;
decrypting the encrypted copied email;
analyzing the copied email including:
scanning the copied email for search terms defining personal or confidential information, and
identifying trends based on the personal or confidential information contained in the copied email including, after the scanning, evaluating occurrences in the copied email of the personal or confidential information and determining the nature and amount of personal or confidential information passing through the copied email; and
identifying, based on the identified trends, one or more security-related protocols for securing future communications between the sender and the intended recipient wherein the one or more security-related protocols are different than protocols used to send communications between the sender and the recipient that were included in the captured email.
18. The method of claim 17 , wherein scanning the copied email includes scanning the captured email for search terms defining personal or confidential information that are stored in a lexicon, the lexicon having one or more categories each associated with a different class of personal or confidential information.
19. The method of claim 17 wherein the one or more trends relate to identification of a specific type of information that has been located when scanning, or individuals, context or types of communications associated with one or more of the occurrences.
20. A method comprising:
receiving a plurality of messages transmitted over a network, each message being communicated between a sender and an intended recipient;
analyzing the messages to identify personal or confidential information contained in the messages including evaluating occurrences of the personal or confidential information and determining the nature and amount of personal or confidential information passing through one or more of the messages;
identifying a security protocol based on the analysis; and
securing future messages as between the sender and the intended recipient using the identified security protocol wherein the security-related protocol is different than a protocol used to send the message between the sender and the recipient.
21. The method of claim 20 , wherein identifying a security protocol includes identifying an encryption protocol for encrypting the message.
22. The method of claim 21 , wherein securing the message includes encrypting the message based on the encryption protocol prior to delivering the message.
23. The method of claim 20 wherein the nature relates to identification of a specific type of information that has been located based on the analysis, or individuals, context or types of communications associated with one or more of the occurrences in the messages.