Whether deployed at a hospital, college, corporation, federal agency, or a nonprofit organization, security of the end device has become a critical component of any organization's data loss prevention and information assurance policies. With data loss events, for example, WikiLeaks or stolen laptops with social security numbers from organizations such as the U.S. Census Bureau, Ireland Department of Social and Family Affairs, or Anheuser-Busch, ensuring that sensitive data stays within the confines of the corporate infrastructure has gained much visibility.

In a traditional physical desktop model, end users are issued desktops or laptops that contain writeable media (hard drives). These end devices store data such as the user's profile, copies of data from file shares, browser cache, plain text documents, images, spreadsheets, and other business and personal data.

Even with encryption of the hard drive on the end device, sensitive data can still reside on the laptop. With...