Patent ID: 8613040

Claim:
A method of safeguarding sensitive information comprising: detecting, by a monitoring application of a computing device, a policy violation on the computing device, wherein the policy violation comprises a user attempt to perform an operation to move data comprising the sensitive information off of the computing device; determining whether one or more previous policy violations have occurred on the computing device, wherein the one or more previous policy violations comprise other attempts of the user to perform an operation to move the data comprising the sensitive information off of the computing device; and performing an action to minimize a risk of data loss based on the one or more previous policy violations and a sequential order that the one or more previous policy violations occurred, wherein the performing the action further comprises: performing a first action to minimize the risk of the data loss in response to determining that no previous policy violations occurred on the computing device; and performing a second action to minimize the risk of the data loss in response determining that the one or more previous policy violations occurred on the computing device, wherein the second action depends on a number, a severity, and the sequential order of the one or more previous policy violations.