asked on

using windows to identify personal data on file shares.

are there any tools/features in windows server (2008 R2 & 2012 ) perhaps within the file server resource monitor app, that could help track down files containing personal/sensitive data on a drive/share on the server, or are tools of this nature 3rd party. Before looking further I wanted to double check we are not overlooking any tools that come with Windows Server before researching 3rd party solutions.

Systech Admin

there are no in built tools on windows server to identify the personal/sensitive data. you need to go with third party tools. Check also
Azure Information Protection services from Microsoft

Scott Silva

How is a tool going to identify personal data anyway? Or are you referring to things like social security numbers and such?

Pau Lo

ASKER

Yes I was thinking it may have some pre-built regex type search features or allow you to build your own for what you mentioned and similar.

Bill Prew

As mentioned, there isn't anything built in to Windows that I know off.

I have seen a few open source things that do some fairly basic stuff, searching text files for regex patterns that match SSN and credit card formats, etc. We explored a couple a few years back but at that time they seemed to generate quite a lot of false positives.

I know there are commercial offerings in this space as well, but typically there are very expensive so you would have to be in a business where the risk supported that high cost.

»bp

Pau Lo

ASKER

Would you mind sharing the opensource tools you trialled. I can imagine most are prone to false positives, just nature of the beast.

ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION

Bill Prew

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