About Custom Document Types
Learn about how Enterprise Data Loss Prevention (E-DLP) uses custom documents you upload to
prevent exfiltration of sensitive data.
On
May 7, 2025,
Palo Alto Networks is introducing new
Evidence Storage and
Syslog Forwarding service IP
addresses to improve performance and expand availability for these services
globally.
| Where Can I Use This? | What Do I Need? |
- NGFW (Managed by Panorama or Strata Cloud Manager)
- Prisma Access (Managed by Panorama or Strata Cloud Manager)
Prisma Browser
|
Or any of the following licenses that include the Enterprise DLP license
- Prisma Access CASB license
- Next-Generation
CASB for Prisma Access and NGFW (CASB-X) license
- Data Security license
|
Enterprise Data Loss Prevention (E-DLP) supports upload and detection of custom documents containing
intellectual property for which you want to prevent exfiltration. You can upload a
custom document type to
Enterprise DLP, or use a
predefined document type, to classify and
detect standardized documents and prevent exfiltration of sensitive data. You use the
uploaded custom document types in
data profiles as match criteria.
Additionally, you can use custom document types along with
predefined Machine Learning-based data
patterns to apply additional ML-based detection algorithms complemented by
confidential or sensitive data specific to your organization.
Enterprise DLP
supports file and non-file inspection for both predefined and custom document types.
All custom documents you upload are isolated to the
Enterprise DLP tenant you upload
them to, and are not shared across different
Enterprise DLP tenants. This means
that if you want to use the same custom document in multiple data profiles in a
multi-tenant environment, you must upload the
custom document to each of the
Enterprise DLP tenants.
Enterprise DLP uses Indexed Document Matching and Trainable Classifiers to
fingerprint and index uploaded custom documents to scan for and detect documents that
completely or partially match what you have already uploaded.
Indexed Document Matching (IDM)—Used to fingerprint documents and create a
document type for documents commonly used by your organization. Uploading
multiple documents allows you to create a custom document repository that you
can use in a data profile.
When you upload a custom document using IDM, Enterprise DLP stores the file
in a secure bucket and extracts the text from the uploaded custom document to
generate the document fingerprint. The original file cannot be reconstructed
from the generated fingerprint. Enterprise DLP retains data from custom
document uploads as follows:
Original uploaded document—Retained for 24 hours after upload.
Extracted text—Retained for 7 days.
Fingerprint—Retained until you delete the custom document
type.
Trainable Classifiers—A supervised machine learning model that analyzes
document types for classifications. As you upload more custom documents as
types, Enterprise DLP can continuously train the ML model to
accurately detect sensitive data matches to inspect for and prevent exfiltration
(Positive Training Documents) and those to ignore (Negative Training Documents). The
upload of a set of custom documents using Trainable Classifiers is referred to as
a custom document model.
Using IDM and Trainable Classifiers for detection of sensitive data enables
Enterprise DLP to continuously improve its detection capabilities by indexing
unstructured text in your documents.
For example, your organization both buys and sells software. You want to only detect
instances of sensitive customer data contained in invoices for software that you sell.
In this case, you can upload a copy of your organization's invoice as a custom document
types for fingerprinting.
However, custom document types are less effective if you want to detect receipts
for software your organization purchases, because there is too much variance in
format between the various software vendors your organization purchases from. Greater
document variance results in less accurate detection of matched traffic.