Defending Formula 1 R&D Data

The customer needed to ensure that information from the research center and teams at race venues was available to authorized users while preventing exfiltration of information by electronic transmission or downloading to removable drives. All actions, even those authorized by policy, required monitoring and logging.

Critical Success Factors

• Unfettered access to data by authorized users 
• The ability to block egress of data and record all authorized actions 
• Enable their mobile IT infrastructure to travel to races worldwide while securing IP at these remote locations 
• Support multiple data types, including CAD drawings, documents, spreadsheets, and scientific data 
• Require users to justify actions when data was moved and log all responses

The Solution

For the race team, no data classification was required. They considered all data residing on their hardware as sensitive. Specific policies were created to address known egress risks, and Fortra™’s Digital Guardian® ’s kernel level agents enforced those policies. The agents allowed authorized users to access information, while detecting attempts to move, copy, or otherwise misuse the data. Digital Guardian was deployed on all devices, including in the team’s mobile IT infrastructure facility. Specific controls include block, log, report and alert on high risk activities, such as copies to removable devices, unloads to non-sanctioned cloud storage, or emailing. 

If exceptions to these policies were required, Digital Guardian prompted the user with a form to acknowledge the risk associated with the exception, and provide a justification for their actions. This request, by itself, often dissuades users from engaging in risky behavior. In addition, the company required specific reports that were available out-of-the box with Digital Guardian. These included data discovery and investigative reports of attempts to hide, delete, encrypt, screen shot, or print sensitive data.