Patent ID: 8005458

Claim:
A device for detecting and preventing leakage of sensitive information from a portable terminal, the device comprising: a data storage unit that stores data containing sensitive information; an external interface that facilitates data transfer external to the portable terminal; a sensitive information manager that detects and prevents leakage of the sensitive information stored in the data storage unit through the external interface, by extracting characteristics from the sensitive information and attaching a flag to the sensitive information; and a sensitive information leakage detecting and preventing unit that is disposed between the data storage unit and the external interface to detect and prevent leakage of the sensitive information, wherein the sensitive information leakage detecting and preventing unit comprises: a characteristic detector that determines information having the characteristics transmitted from the sensitive information manager as the sensitive information; a flag detector that determines information containing the flag transmitted from the sensitive information manager as the sensitive information; and a Heuristic detector that learns, in advance, a period in which the user uses information and an access pattern, and detects leakage of the sensitive information based on at least one of the period of the access pattern.