About

As a Virtru administrator, you can leverage Virtru's Security Rules (formerly DLP) to dictate how Virtru will behave when certain content is found in your users' outgoing encrypted emails and files.  You'll configure and manage these rules from the Virtru Control Center's Rules page. The different types of rule and their associated actions are described below

Jump to:

Text Pattern Rules
Keyword Rules
Recipient Rules
Rule Actions
Custom Rules
Refreshing Security Rules

Text Pattern Rules

The rules listed under "When I type these text patterns..." use Regular Expressions (RegEx) to match consistently formatted number and text patterns. The default patterns included with Virtru are Social Security Number, IP Address, Federal Employee Identification Number (EIN), Possibly Sensitive, and Credit Card Number.  

• Social Security Number: Triggers on any number string that could potentially be a Social Security Number.
• IP Address:  Triggers on any number string that could potentially be an IP Address.
• Federal Employee Identification Number (EIN):  Triggers on any number string that could potentially be a Federal Employee Identification Number (EIN).
• Possibly Sensitive:  A more generic rule than the others will flag a variety of different number patterns. This may result in a high volume of false-positive flags, so only use this rule if your needs can't be met with other rule options.
• Credit Card Number:  Triggers on any number string that could potentially be a Credit Card Number.

Keyword Rules

Rules in the "When I type these keywords..." section are triggered by a precise match with a listed keyword (with one exception - see below). You can add your own simple keyword rules to this list via the +ADD RULE button.  A list of keywords can be added at once by comma-separating the entries. Note that some special characters are not supported in the keywords rules (for example [ ]).

Recipient Rules

The "When I send to..." section allows you to specify an action based on the recipient of the email.  This can be configured either by exact email address or by domain name. Email addresses and domains cannot be added in bulk; entering a list will result in only the first item being added to your rules.

Rule Actions

Rules in the Text Patterns, Keywords, and Recipients sections can be assigned to take one of four possible actions when the rule is triggered.

Block:

For compatible platforms*, a Block rule will stop an email from going out altogether. Gmail users will receive an alert providing details on the block and instructions to remove the sensitive content. Customer-Hosted Gateway users will receive a bounce message.

*This function is only available for Gmail and Customer-Hosted Gateway users.

Encrypt:

An Encrypt rule will encrypt the email automatically as soon as the user hits Send.  They'll see the Virtru encryption animation without any option to have the email go out unencrypted. 

Warn:

A rule set to Warn will trigger an alert for client-side plugin users when they click "Send".  The warning dialog will provide exactly what the offending text is. The end user has the option to either send the message encrypted ("Protect and Send"), or disregard the warning and send unencrypted ("Send Anyway").

Log Only:

A Log Only rule will take no noticeable action on an outgoing email.  If the email is being sent unencrypted, the rule will have no effect at all.  If the email is sent encrypted, however, any Log Only rules triggered by that email will be logged in that email's Validation Report in the Virtru Control Center.  

Custom Rules

To perform more complex Security Rule operations - including multiple scan parameters, multiple actions, and additional action types - admins can create custom rules via the Custom Rule Builder button next to the "Filter" search bar at the top of the page.

These will be found in the "Custom Rules" section at the bottom of the page.

More information on creating Custom Rules can be found in this article: Virtru Control Center: Creating Custom Security Rules

Refreshing Security Rules

Security Rule changes are not immediately pulled in on every platform but will automatically update on regular intervals. The automatic intervals and how to manually refresh per platform can be found below: