Ping64 Quotation Data Leak Prevention for Securities Finance

I. One Quotation Sheet, the Cost of Three Seconds

In the fixed-income department of a leading securities firm, a trader was communicating bond quotations with an institutional client. To confirm transaction details, he sent an Excel file containing the day’s bond quotations, yield curves, and position recommendations to the counterparty via personal WeChat. Three seconds later, the file appeared in a WeChat group that was being forwarded by external parties.

A subsequent investigation found that the file contained the proprietary trading account’s position structure and quotation strategy, from which competitors could infer its trading intentions and pricing logic. More worryingly, this was not an isolated case. From researchers mistakenly sending unpublished research reports to external partners, to investment banking project working papers being taken out of the office by employees, to proprietary trading strategies flowing out through instant messaging tools—quotation data in the securities and financial industry is leaving enterprise walls in various unexpected ways.

In 2025, U.S. market maker Virtu Financial was fined $2.5 million by the SEC for failing to effectively isolate client trading information. The investigation revealed that almost all employees in its brokerage trading department could access client names and the names, prices, and quantities of securities bought and sold through a “well-known and frequently shared generic username and password.” In 2026, a Morgan Stanley employee mistakenly sent an email containing information on more than 100 transactions to external parties, involving IPO candidate lists and private investor information across multiple Asian locations. Previously, Soochow Securities received a warning letter from the CSRC after its issuer personnel leaked new share quotation information during the sensitive inquiry period.

These cases reveal a common governance dilemma: quotation data leaks often do not come from external attacks, but from “normal operations” by internal personnel—a mistaken click to send, a transmission through a personal tool, a screenshot shared. Traditional security solutions can detect external attacks, but struggle to identify at the moment an employee clicks “send” that “this file should not be sent out.”

II. Why Securities and Financial Quotation Data Is Particularly Hard to Manage

Quotation data management in the securities and financial industry faces three unique structural challenges.

First, the mismatch between the time-sensitive value of data and the protection cycle. The effective window for a bond quotation may be only a few minutes, and the sensitive period for a new share inquiry may be only a few hours. After this window, the commercial value of the data drops sharply, but enterprise protection measures often need to remain effective throughout the entire data lifecycle. Traditional “blocking-style” controls seriously hinder business efficiency during the window period, while “allow-style” management cannot trace the source of leaks after the window period.

Second, leak channels are highly dispersed and business needs are highly real. Traders need to communicate quotations with external institutional clients in real time, researchers need to submit research reports to compliance departments, and investment banking personnel need to share project working papers with law firms and accounting firms. These behaviors are completely reasonable in business terms, but they precisely constitute the main channels for data leakage. The core contradiction facing security teams is: how to accurately identify which outbound behaviors are necessary and which are dangerous while satisfying real business needs.

Third, regulatory compliance requirements continue to escalate. In 2026, six government departments jointly issued the “Guidelines for Data Classification and Grading of Financial Information Services,” classifying data into four levels: core data, important data, sensitive general data, and regular general data. Among these, undisclosed fund data and foreign exchange data involving RMB were explicitly classified as “sensitive general data.” Securities institutions not only need to protect their own data but also need to review the compliance status of their data suppliers. The CSRC’s “Guidelines for the Application of Cryptographic Technology in Securities and Futures Industry Information Systems” explicitly requires prioritizing the use of national cryptographic algorithm systems such as SM2, SM3, and SM4.

III. From “Managing Channels” to “Managing Files”: Ping64’s Governance Logic

The core logic of traditional security solutions is “managing channels”—deploying control policies separately on email gateways, DLP consoles, and endpoint management systems. But quotation data management in the securities and financial industry does not need “control over a certain channel,” but rather “control over a certain file.”

The core breakthrough of the Ping64 integrated office security platform is: enabling every quotation file to carry protection attributes from the moment it is created, and no matter which channel it travels through or whose edits it goes through, these attributes always accompany it.

The concrete implementation of this logic in the securities and financial industry is reflected in the collaboration of capabilities at four levels.

IV. Content Identification: Turning “What Should Not Be Sent” from a Vague Feeling into Executable Rules

What the securities and financial industry most needs to solve is not “blocking all outbound transfers,” but “knowing which files should not be sent.”

Ping64’s content identification engine comes with preset data identification rules common in the financial industry, capable of identifying structured data such as client fund account numbers, ID numbers, mobile phone numbers, and bank card numbers, while also supporting the identification of key information such as “internal reports,” “undisclosed,” “proprietary trading,” “investment banking projects,” and “high-net-worth clients.” Through content identification and machine learning, the system automatically marks files as different levels such as “public,” “internal,” “sensitive,” and “core.”

The core value of this capability is: employees do not need to know “whether this quotation sheet is sensitive”—the system already knows in advance. When a trader prepares to send an Excel file containing proprietary position recommendations to an external client, the system automatically identifies that the file contains core trading strategy information and triggers real-time risk alerts or approval processes based on policies.

V. Channel Control and Real-Time Intervention: Stopping Risk Before the Click on “Send”

Content identification solves the problem of “which files are sensitive,” while channel control solves the problem of “how files get out.”

Ping64 covers all common outbound channels in the securities and financial industry: email clients and webmail attachments, instant messaging tools (WeChat, WeCom, DingTalk, etc.), personal cloud drives and cloud storage, browser upload behavior, removable storage device copying, and physical channels such as printing and Bluetooth. Each channel can be configured with separate policies. The system can parse file content in real time, and once core information is identified, it automatically triggers prompts, approvals, blocks, encryption, or watermarking based on policies.

Ping64’s unique feature is millisecond-level real-time intervention before the click on “Send.” When a researcher clicks send in an email, Ping64 completes content identification and policy matching in milliseconds. If the recipient belongs to an external domain and the attachment contains core sensitive information, the system immediately pops up a risk prompt, requiring the employee to fill in the reason for sending or automatically entering the approval process. Many mistaken operators will realize at this step that the recipient is wrong or the file version is incorrect, and voluntarily cancel the send.

After approval, the system automatically processes the outbound file: adding tracing watermarks, setting validity periods, limiting the number of openings, and embedding tracing identifiers. A complete record of each outbound operation is archived in the unified audit center, including the sender, approver, recipient, file information, outbound channel, timestamp, and tracing identifier.

VI. Endpoint Protection: Making Quotation Files “Cannot Be Taken Away, Cannot Be Opened”

A large part of the leak risk in the securities and financial industry comes from management vacuums on the endpoint side. Ping64 establishes three layers of protection on the endpoint side.

• The first layer is transparent document encryption. For specified types of files containing quotation data, position analysis, and investment banking project materials, Ping64 automatically encrypts them when they are created or saved. The encryption process is completely transparent to endpoint users, without affecting normal research analysis and collaboration efficiency. Once an encrypted file leaves the enterprise’s controlled environment—copied to a USB drive, uploaded to a personal cloud drive, or sent via a chat tool—it cannot be opened or will appear as garbled text.
• The second layer is screenshot and print control. The DLP module controls behaviors such as screenshots, printing, and copy-paste. On highly sensitive endpoints, Ping64 can record screenshot behavior, embed responsibility watermarks, and implement interception or alerts when policies are triggered. This capability directly supports securities institutions in implementing regulatory requirements such as information barriers, client information protection, and undisclosed information management.
• The third layer is application-level network control. Applications such as personal cloud drives, instant messaging tools, and personal email are high-risk channels for quotation data outbound transfers. Ping64 can identify and control applications running on endpoints, intercepting or auditing file outbound behavior to ensure that traders’ and researchers’ core data cannot be transmitted through unauthorized applications.

These three layers of protection do not operate independently. Transparent document encryption gives files protection attributes, screenshot control restricts visual channels, and application control restricts network channels—the three share the same policy engine and user identity system, forming a complete protection chain from file attributes to channel control to user permissions.

VII. Integrated Advantages in Supply Chain Collaboration Scenarios

The particularity of the securities and financial industry lies in the fact that quotation data flow is not only a “leak prevention” issue but also a “collaboration security” issue. Securities firms need to communicate quotations with institutional clients in real time, share investment banking working papers with law firms and accounting firms, and exchange market information with data suppliers. Every collaboration involves file outbound transfer, and every outbound transfer is a trust decision.

Ping64’s integrated advantages in supply chain collaboration scenarios are reflected in three “linkages.”

1.  Policy linkage. The sensitivity level of a file at the storage stage automatically determines its approval policy and control strength at the outbound stage. The compliance status of an endpoint at the admission stage automatically affects its permission to initiate outbound requests. These policies are centrally configured in the unified policy center, taking effect across the entire network from a single configuration, avoiding policy conflicts and coverage blind spots across multiple systems.

2.  Data linkage. The user identity initiating the outbound transfer comes from the unified identity system, the endpoint compliance status comes from the endpoint security management module, the file sensitivity level comes from the content identification engine, the outbound records come from the approval process, and the tracing identifiers come from the watermark system. This information is automatically correlated when an outbound request is initiated, without the need for cross-system queries. Every flow of a file from creation to outbound forms a complete evidence chain in the unified audit center.

3.  Audit linkage. Administrators can enter a file fingerprint or user account to simultaneously retrieve all relevant records for that file or person—storage location, outbound records, approval records, and tracing identifiers—without switching between multiple systems. Ping64 comes with preset compliance report templates such as SOX and ISO 27001, dynamically displaying governance health through continuous monitoring dashboards, transforming compliance auditing from periodic event preparation into part of daily operations.

For quotation file exchanges with institutional clients, Ping64 also supports controlled outbound formats: files are transmitted in encrypted form, and the recipient needs to open them in a specified environment. Upon opening, it automatically connects to the Ping64 verification server for identity verification and permission checks. Files cannot be forwarded, copied, or saved as other formats, ensuring the secure flow of core quotation data in the supply chain.

VIII. The Advantage of an Integrated Platform: From “Stacking Security Capabilities” to “Upgrading Governance Logic”

Integrating content identification, channel control, endpoint encryption, approval processes, and tracing identifiers on the same platform provides advantages not only at the functional level but also at the governance logic level. The traditional security construction approach is to deploy a DLP, add encryption, and then add auditing. Each system can only see the segment it “manages”: DLP knows whether content matches rules but does not know whether the endpoint is compliant; the encryption system knows whether a file is encrypted but does not know which channel the file is being transmitted through; the audit system records operation logs but cannot correlate file content with personnel context.

Ping64’s integrated architecture eliminates this fragmentation. When one security module discovers a risk, it can immediately invoke other modules to execute response actions, forming a complete closed loop of “discovery—response—record.” This cross-module automated linkage compresses the time window from “discovering risk” to “controlling risk” to near-synchronous levels.

IX. From “Post-Event Accountability” to “Pre-Event Interception”

Quotation data protection in the securities and financial industry cannot rely on employee self-discipline, nor can it rely on post-event accountability. In an industry where the value window of quotation data is measured in minutes, a single leak may cause irreversible losses before the enterprise even discovers it.

What the Ping64 integrated office security platform provides for the securities and financial industry is precisely a complete protection mechanism from pre-event identification, in-event intervention, to post-event tracing: content identification to determine the sensitivity level of quotation files, endpoint encryption to give files protection attributes, channel control to restrict outbound paths, real-time intervention to intercept mistaken operation risks, and tracing identifiers to maintain controllability after outbound transfer. These capabilities operate collaboratively on the same platform, enabling securities institutions to establish a complete leak prevention closed loop from endpoint to outbound, from usage to auditing, without sacrificing trading efficiency.

In an era where data classification and grading regulation in the securities industry continues to escalate and the commercial value of quotation data becomes increasingly prominent, making every quotation file leave the enterprise environment with “safe factory” attributes may be the most pragmatic protection for the core competitiveness of the securities and financial industry.