A data loss prevention (DLP) solution is essential to any company’s security strategy. It prevents the theft of sensitive data, identifies violations of organizational policies and enforces remediation. Data exfiltration, corporate espionage, and ransomware are becoming increasingly common enterprise threats. These attacks and the security talent shortage make DLP solutions essential in protecting your business.
Data Loss Prevention
Data loss is a severe concern for businesses that rely on data to support operations. From customer records and intellectual property to future business plans and financial information, there is no way around the fact that data is at risk. Data loss prevention (DLP) tools and technologies help organizations prevent breaches by blocking unauthorized access to sensitive information. These tools filter data streams, control endpoint activities and monitor cloud storage to protect data in use, in motion and at rest.
In addition to preventing data loss, DLP solution helps businesses comply with regulations such as the GDPR and HIPAA. They classify data as regulated, confidential or critical and identify policy violations.
DLP tools also safeguard data in transit by monitoring, controlling and encrypting data transmissions via email or other channels. They can block data exfiltration by preventing users from uploading or forwarding confidential information outside a corporate network.
These solutions use machine learning to evaluate user risk ratings depending on the kind and location of the data being communicated, allowing for more effective restrictions and minimizing the impact on systems and staff productivity.
A crucial part of implementing an effective DLP strategy is prioritizing the highest risks. DLP tools can automate this process by identifying the most valuable data and allowing you to secure it with minimal disruption to your business processes.
Data Security
Data loss prevention is essential to ensuring that sensitive information doesn’t fall into the wrong hands. It’s a risk that affects companies of all sizes and can significantly impact their reputation, business competitiveness, customer relationships and bottom line.
Many data breaches are not a result of hacking but through employees accidentally or negligently leaking information. It risks company data, large sums of money, and even jobs.
Businesses are legally obligated to protect sensitive information and ensure it remains confidential. It includes protecting customer and user data, trade secrets, proprietary information and other intellectual property, which can be subject to fines and other penalties if not kept safe.
The key to adequate data security is implementing a robust security management and strategy process, including DLP, which helps to prevent data breaches and malicious attacks. It also enables organizations to meet industry and state regulations, such as those governing consumer data protection.
Typically, DLP uses an automated data identification and classification system to locate and secure sensitive information. It then monitors usage and activity to look for suspicious behavior or anomalies. This monitoring and detection can be performed on various data types, including files sent via email or instant messaging, data streams on the network, or data in a managed endpoint.
Data Encryption
Keeping your sensitive data safe from hackers and other cyber threats is crucial to the success of your business. The correct data encryption software can help you achieve this.
When you encrypt data, it is scrambled into something unreadable to unauthorized users. It makes it impossible for attackers to read it, even if they get past your firewall.
In addition, data encryption helps to protect your business from ransomware attacks. These malicious programs infect a computer or network, encrypt its data, and then demand a ransom payment to regain access. A robust data encryption solution combined with effective key management can protect your organization from unauthorized access, modification, disclosure or theft of sensitive data. Using software agents to determine whether data should be encrypted or not, data encryption is often used for data that is stored (or “at rest”) as well as data that is transmitted and transferred (“in transit”).
Collaborating with stakeholders across your organization is the first step in implementing an effective data encryption strategy. IT departments often handle the implementation of data security measures, but everyone in the organization must be involved.
Once a data encryption strategy is in place, businesses should consider securing their mobile devices, laptops, and backups. These items are more vulnerable to a data breach than other computers and can pose a greater risk of data loss.
Data Retention
Data retention is a vital part of a robust information management strategy. It provides regulatory compliance, legal defenses, disaster recovery and other benefits that help organizations extract value from data while ensuring security and minimizing risks. To create a data retention policy, assess the data you manage. Classify it according to types and categories, then research which laws apply to your organization. In addition to regulatory nuances, different industries have unique data retention requirements. For example, healthcare organizations must adhere to data retention rules under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). Payment card companies must comply with data retention policies outlined in the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS). As you identify different data types, you must set a specific period for each class. It ensures that you leave data in place for only a short time or violate legal requirements. Creating a data retention policy also involves developing backup procedures to help an organization recover in the event of data loss. Too little data backed up means that a company will not have the correct records to restore operations after a disaster, while too much may cause confusion and consume expensive storage space. Lastly, a data retention policy should include a process for archiving and disposing of data. This way, the organization can destroy data that doesn’t need to be retained after a specific time.
