Digital exhaust is a relatively new term that describes the data leakage that occurs when you move around the public internet.
Everything you do online—email, internet browsing, app use, social media—leaves behind a trail of data that can be used to build your persona and determine your geo-location. It is a passive trail of information that can be used by marketers to sell you targeted products and services, or it is information that can be used by “bad guys” to figure out who you are, where you are, and what you’re doing online.
Controlling digital exhaust is a key factor in obfuscation and managed attribution—issues of great importance if you need to protect corporate information or conduct sensitive research or analysis online. If you use Tor or one-hop proxies in an attempt to control digital exhaust, you’re basically waving a flag telling anyone watching that you are not who or where you pretend to be.
Armored Cloud’s suite of products was designed to control and manage digital exhaust. Our solutions are used by everyone from intelligence organizations needing to do research and influence online across the globe, to law firms protecting the source and destination of their communication to protect knowledge about upcoming IPOs or mergers. We also work with finance institutions on creating state-of-the-art threat intelligence centers.
Read more about this issue in “Digital Exhaust and the Enterprise”. If your company needs to better manage data leakage, please contact us for a private demo or free trial (only available to qualified organizations).