Google DLP Makes It Easier to Safeguard Sensitive Data Troves

When Ivan Medvedev joined Google as a privacy engineering manager in 2013, the company had rogue data anxiety. Its user base and set of services had become so massive that it seemed inevitable that sensitive data could accidentally crop up in unexpected places, like customers filing support tickets with more personal information than necessary. So Medvedev worked with colleagues on Google's privacy team to develop an internal tool that could scan large amounts of data and automatically home in on identifying information or other sensitive data. Whether it was an old tax form accidentally captured in a photo or patient data embedded in the pixels of an ultrasound, the team designed the tool to find the unexpected. "It should not be misunderstood as a comprehensive, privacy-proofed solution in itself."