Patent ID: 8701156

Claim:
A method, implemented by a computing system programmed to perform the following, comprising: monitoring, by a data loss prevention (DLP) agent, outbound data transfers performed by the computing system; detecting, by the DLP agent, a violation of a DLP policy in a current one of the outbound data transfers to a second computing system; initiating communication with the second computing system to determine whether the second computing system meets a minimum protection level for the DLP policy; determining from the communication whether the second computing system meets the minimum protection level for the DLP policy, wherein the determining comprises determining from the communication whether the second computing system has a capability to identify protected data in the current outbound data transfer and to protect the protected data if the current outbound data transfer were transferred to the second computing system; and preventing the current data transfer to the second computing system when the second computing system does not meet the minimum protection level for the DLP policy.