A fundamental shift from detection to prevention in file security.
Every organization faces the same challenge: files flow in constantly—via email, web uploads, cloud storage, APIs, removable media—and any one of them could harbor malware, ransomware, or sophisticated exploits. Traditional security tools attempt to identify these threats through signatures, behavioral analysis, or machine learning. But detection has a fundamental problem: it requires knowing what you're looking for.
Content Disarm and Reconstruction (CDR) is a security technology that takes a proactive, prevention-first approach to file-borne threats. Unlike traditional antivirus or sandboxing solutions that attempt to detect malicious content, CDR removes all potentially dangerous elements from files—regardless of whether they're known threats or never-before-seen zero-day exploits.
The process works by breaking down incoming files into their fundamental components—text, images, formatting, metadata—analyzing each element against its expected structure, discarding anything that doesn't conform to safe specifications, and then rebuilding a clean, functional file from the verified safe elements.
This approach is fundamentally different from detection-based security because it doesn't require prior knowledge of a threat to neutralize it. Whether it's a sophisticated nation-state attack, a brand-new ransomware variant, or a cleverly disguised phishing payload, CDR eliminates the attack surface before the file ever reaches your users.
The result is a file that looks and functions identically to the original—your users won't notice any difference—but with all active content, scripts, macros, embedded objects, and other potential threat vectors completely removed.
