RSA, which has its own Data Loss Prevention Suite based on the Tablus acquisition but has also chosen to strategically partner with Microsoft and Cisco in a DLP technology-sharing arrangement, says DLP is going to end up as the “eyes and ears in many places,” says Tom Corn, vice president of product strategy at RSA.

DLP can be viewed as a standalone product or as a feature in other products, Corn points out. RSA, as part of storage giant EMC which also owns VMware, will be putting DLP capabilities into products in all those realms — though that may take time.

“Our DLP today can see inside Solaris file systems today and in our eRoom product line, and over time, there are reasons why classification technology should get built with back-up solutions,” Corn says. While a lot of the work is still to be done, the vision at EMC/RSA calls for DLP to play a role in eDiscovery and life-cycle management.”

What’s not widely known about DLP is how much work from experts in language and library sciences is required to make content-monitoring work, says Corn. DLP is going to be used not just by speakers of English or other European languages, but by speakers of Chinese and Japanese, and RSA will soon come out with DLP products for that.