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What is Data Loss Prevention?
Data loss prevention is the set of tools, processes, and procedures used to prevent sensitive information from being lost, mishandled, or accessed unintentionally. DLP policies document the steps an organization takes to protect its data resources. It defines acceptable methods for users to share company data and gain access. The policy also describes how authorized users can use data without accidentally disclosing it to others.
What is Data Loss Prevention (DLP Software)?
DLP software classifies confidential, regulated and business-critical data. It detects any violations of policies set by the organization or within an existing policy package. This is usually driven by compliance regulations such as HIPAA or PCI DSS. DLP enforces remediation by alerting, encrypting, and taking other protective measures to stop end-users from sharing information maliciously or accidentally.
Software and tools for data loss prevention monitor, control, and filter endpoint activity, monitor, stream, and protect data while it is in transit, at rest or in use. DLP provides reports to comply with compliance requirements, identify weak areas and anomalies and assist in incident response.
Do We Need Data Loss Prevention? Data Loss Prevention: 3 Main Uses
The prevention of data loss solves the three major objectives for which many companies have pain: protection and compliance with personal information, protection of intellectual property, and visibility.
- Personal Information Protection / Compliance: Does your company collect or store Personally Identifiable Information, Protected Health Information and Payment Card Information? You are likely to be subject to regulations such as HIPAA for PHI and GDPR for personal data from EU residents. These require that you protect sensitive customer data. DLP can identify, categorize, and tag data that's sensitive and track events and activities surrounding it. Reporting capabilities also provide details for audits.
- Intellectual Property Protection: Does your company have valuable intellectual property, trade secrets or state secrets? If they were lost or stolen, would this put the financial and image health of your business at risk and your brand's reputation in danger? Cyber Infrastructure Inc., a DLP solution that uses context-based classifying, can classify both unstructured and structured intellectual property. You can prevent unwanted data exfiltration by implementing policies and controls.
- Data Visibility: Does your company want to have a better understanding of data flow? You can track and see your data across endpoints and networks as well as in the cloud with a comprehensive DLP enterprise solution. You will gain visibility on how users in your company interact with the data.
DLP is not limited to these three use cases. It can also be used for a wide range of pain points, including the analysis of user behavior, Office 365 security and insider threats.
Why Data Loss Prevention? 7 Trends Driving DLP Adoption
2023 for Enterprise DLP estimated the market size of the data loss prevention industry at $3.3 billion by 2023. Updated forecasts indicate that the market will likely reach $4.64 Billion in 2024. DLP isn't a new market, but its scope has expanded to encompass managed services, cloud functionality and storage, as well as advanced threat protection. This, combined with an increase in the number of data breaches on a large scale, has led to a huge uptick in DLP as a way to protect sensitive information. Nine trends are driving DLP adoption:
CISO Roles are Growing in Importance
Many companies hire Chief Information Security Officers (CISOs), often reporting to their CEO. The CEO wants to understand the plan of action for stopping data leaks. DLP offers clear value to businesses in this area and provides CISOs with the reporting tools they need to update the CEO regularly.
Changing Compliance Requirements
Data protection laws and regulations are constantly changing, and organizations need to adapt and be prepared. In the last couple of years, legislators in New York State and the EU have both passed NYDFS Cybersecurity Regulation and GDPR, which tighten data protection regulations. DLP allows organizations to adapt their solutions in line with global regulatory changes.
You can Protect your Data in More Places
The increased use of cloud services, complex supply chains, and other service providers that you do not have complete control over has made it harder to protect your data. It is crucial to have visibility into events surrounding your data and the context in which they occur before your data leaves your company. This will help prevent your sensitive information from falling into the wrong hands.
Large and Frequent Data Breach
Cybercriminals, nation-states, and malicious insiders target your sensitive information for many reasons, including corporate espionage and personal financial gain. DLP protects against malicious and non-malicious adversaries. In the last two years alone, thousands of security incidents and data breaches have occurred. In recent years, there have been massive data breaches that resulted in the loss of billions of records.
Examples include the misconfiguration in a database that exposed nearly 250,000,000 US voter records by 2023, the Equifax breach, which kept growing in size, and the Yahoo data breach, which affected three billion users. This is just a small sample of headlines that highlight the importance of protecting your company's data.
Your Organization's Stolen Information is More Valuable
Stolen information is often sold on the Dark Web, where groups and individuals can buy it and use it to their benefit. Certain data types can sell for as much as a few thousand dollars. This creates a financial incentive to steal data, especially financial data like credit card numbers or bank account information.
More Data to Steal
Over the years, sensitive data definition has evolved. Intangible assets such as business rules and methodologies, pricing models, or even business rules are now considered sensitive data. According to a Study, from 1975 to 2022, the intangible asset value grew by 84%. In 2023, these assets reached a new record of $21 trillion. Your organization will have a greater amount of data to secure.
Security Talent is in Short Supply
This shortage of security talent will not go away any time soon, and your organization has probably felt the impact already. A 2022 survey found that 53% of respondents felt their organization was affected by this shortage. It is expected that 4.5 million security jobs will remain unfilled by 2023. The managed DLP services are remote extensions to your team that fill the personnel gaps.
Data Loss Prevention Best Practices
To enforce policies on data usage, it is important to use techniques such as auditing and data loss prevention. It is important to understand how the data is being used and where it has been. This will help you determine whether or not compliance policies like GDPR are met. Administrators should receive real-time alerts when a suspicious activity is detected. This allows them to investigate. Violators should be punished according to the policy on data security. These data protection best practices can help protect sensitive data against internal and external threats.
1. Classify and Identify Sensitive Information
You need to be able to identify the types of data that you possess for you to protect them effectively. The data discovery software will search your repositories of information and provide a report, allowing you to see what you should protect. The data discovery engines use regular expressions to search. They are flexible but difficult to build and refine.
Data discovery and classification technologies help you to control data access for users and prevent sensitive data from being stored in non-secure places, reducing data leaks. You should mark all sensitive or critical data with a digital sign that indicates its classification. This will allow you to protect the data according to its importance for your organization.
The classification of data can be changed as it is generated, altered, transmitted or stored. Controls should prevent users from changing classification levels. Only privileged users, for example, should have the ability to lower data classification.
Use these guidelines when creating a solid data classification policy. Don't forget data classification and discovery as part of the IT risk assessment.
Lists of Access Control
ACL is an access control list that lists who has access to what resources and at what levels. This can be a part of the operating system or an application. An ACL might be used in a customized application to list which users are allowed what access.
ACLs may be built on blocklists or allowlists. Allowlists are lists of things that are permitted, for example, a listing of sites that employees are allowed to access using company computers. Or a third-party list of software that is allowed to be installed. Lists of prohibited items are called blocklists. Examples include websites employees cannot visit or software they are forbidden from installing on their computers.
They are usually configured on the filesystem level. Microsoft Windows allows you to configure NTFS rights and create NTFS Access Control Lists. This list of NTFS management best practices contains more information on how to configure NTFS rights. Access controls must be applied to every application with role-based access control. Examples include Active Directory Groups and Delegation.
2. Use Data Encryption
Data that is critical to the business should be protected, whether it's in transit or at rest. If portable devices are storing important data, they should have encrypted disk solutions.
By encrypting hard drives on computers and laptops, you can prevent the loss of important information if an attacker gains access to your device. Encrypting the file system (EFS), the most common way of encrypting data in Windows is the easiest method. EFS automatically decrypts an encrypted file when an authorized user clicks on it. It then provides a copy of the unencrypted file to the application.
EFS will save changes as encrypted data transparently so that authorized users can view and modify files. Unauthorized users will not be able to view the content of a file, even if they are in full control of their device. They'll receive an error message that says "Access denied", preventing any data breaches.
BitLocker is another encryption tool from Microsoft. BitLocker provides an extra layer of security for Windows-based devices. BitLocker offers data protection for endpoint devices, including those that have been lost or stolen. It also provides secure disposal of data when you are decommissioning a device.
Hardware-Based Cryptography
Hardware-based cryptography can also be used in addition to software encryption. In the advanced settings of some BIOS menus, you can enable or disable trusted platform modules (TPM). This chip can store cryptographic keys, passwords or certificates. The TPM can protect devices other than computers, including smartphones. It can generate values for whole-disk encryption, such as BitLocker. The TPM chip is installed directly on the motherboard.
3. Harden your Systems
It is important to secure any place where sensitive information could be stored, whether it's temporary or permanent, based on what type of data the system may have access to. All external systems with access to the internal network via remote connections that have significant privileges are included in this. A network is only secure as its weakest link. Usability is still important, but a balance must be struck between security and functionality.
OS Baselining
To secure your system, you should first ensure that the configuration of the operating systems is as safe as possible. Most operating systems include unneeded services, which can give hackers additional ways to compromise your system. Only those programs or listening services which are necessary for employees to perform their duties should be activated. Disable anything that doesn't serve a purpose for your business. You can create an OS baseline that's secure and is only used by the average employee. Enable services and programs as needed. Windows and Linux will have different baseline configurations.
4. Use a Strict Patch Management Strategy
Data protection and cybersecurity are dependent on the up-to-date status of all applications and operating systems in your IT infrastructure. Some things can be automated. For example, they are updating the antivirus signatures. However, critical infrastructure patches need to undergo thorough testing to make sure that they do not introduce vulnerabilities or compromise functionality.
5. Assign Roles
Define the roles of all individuals involved in the strategy to prevent data loss. Define who is responsible for what data and which IT officers will be investigating security incidents.
6. Automate Everything You Can
You can deploy DLP across your organization more widely if you automate more processes. Manual DLP is inherently restricted in scope and can't scale up to the requirements of even the smallest IT environment.
7. Use Anomaly Detection
Machine learning and behavioral analytics are used by some DLP solutions to identify unusual user behavior. By creating a model that represents the typical behavior of users and groups of users, it is possible to detect suspicious activities more accurately.
8. Educate Stakeholders
It is not sufficient to have a DLP Policy. It is important to educate stakeholders about the importance of DLP and the steps they must take to protect the data of an organization.
9. Establish Metrics
Use metrics to measure the success of your DLP strategies, such as the percent of false positives and the number of incidents.
10. Save Only the Data you Need
Only essential information should be stored by an organization. You cannot lose data that you do not have. We understand that security personnel are in short supply, and our team is here to help fill the gap.
The Managed Security Program expands your team's capabilities. Our global teams of security analysts will work around the clock to ensure that sensitive information does not leave your company. Our data protection team will manage all your infrastructure, and we'll help you deploy it quickly.
Experts Weigh in on Data Loss Prevention
Take a look at what experts say about preventing data loss.
- Data Protection is Everyone's Job: Everyone in the company has a role to play when it comes to data protection. Although the IT department is responsible for the daily maintenance of these systems and procedures, other stakeholders in your company can influence the security policy.
Imagine the impact of a breach of data: Brand damage, infractions of regulations (and fines), and the loss of customers and sales hurts the entire company. The IT department may not be able to handle all these problems. You must include the company leaders who are the key stakeholders in the case you build for DLP.
You must include the key stakeholders in your organization when building the case for DLP. Invite these individuals to join you during the discovery phase and allow them to see demos, ask questions and make a final decision. It is important to include leaders in the discussions from different departments, including engineering, operations and legal.
- Security is Not Just Encryption: Security is incomplete without encryption. Although it is mostly hidden, strong encryption is used every day. Our Internet-laced society would be much more dangerous if we didn't.
- Insider Threats are a Concern: we worked closely with organizations to both prevent and respond to incidents. We have found that it is "easy" to detect and deter insider threats if the organization takes a proactive approach. The best way to stay proactive is to take a strategic approach. This can include internal training to make business users feel more responsible and aware of the risks. It could also involve monitoring companies' activities to set rules on acceptable behavior for employees as part of work duties and to flag any instances of non-compliance.
FAQs
What is Data Loss Prevention?
DLP prevents the intentional or unintentional misuse of sensitive information by encrypting data and alerting users. DLP monitors, protects, and tracks network data, cloud data, endpoints, and other sensitive information at rest or in transit. Reporting is also part of data loss prevention to meet audit and regulatory requirements.
Three Types of Use Cases or Applications for Data Loss Prevention
The following problems that organizations face can be addressed by data loss prevention solutions:
Complying With Personal Information Security Regulations - The DLP solution can help classify sensitive data that fall under regulatory standards. Companies in the U.S. Healthcare industry, which process Protected Health Information (PHI), are an example. HIPAA regulates the security and privacy of this data. DLP monitors activities that involve this data and can provide reports documenting regulatory compliance.
Protecting Intellectual Property (IP) - Data protection solutions use context-based classification of data to determine important IP which needs enhanced security. Data protection controls and policies help protect a business's intellectual property from unauthorized users.
Provides Enhanced Data Visibility - An enterprise DLP can monitor data on endpoints, networks and the cloud. Information can be protected and used efficiently with the enhanced visibility of how data is being used across an organization.
How Can We Prevent Data Loss From Happening?
Implementing a solution for enterprise data protection is the best way to avoid data loss. It should be designed to ensure that only authorized users can access information and safeguard it in case of data breaches. To implement these measures, it is necessary to improve cybersecurity by implementing practices such as multi-factor authentication and end-to-end encryption.
What are DLPs and Their Types?
The data loss prevention approach is a way to secure sensitive information by implementing several tools, processes and procedures. Data loss prevention comes in three forms: network DLP (data leakage prevention), endpoint DLP and cloud DLP.
Conclusion
Data loss prevention is the set of procedures, processes and tools that are designed to stop sensitive data from being lost, mishandled or accessed by unauthorized persons. DLP solutions classify data to identify if it's regulated, sensitive or vital to business. The software then detects any violations of organizational policies that are implemented to ensure compliance with regulations such as HIPAA and GDPR.
Cyber Infrastructure Inc., a cloud-based platform for data protection that's next generation, is the first solution to combine DLP with endpoint detection and reaction (EDR) and User and Entity Behavior Analytics (UEBA). This enables data protection against all types of threats.
Our DLP platform is comprehensive and eliminates the requirement for extra agents or consoles to support EDR and UEBA. This allows IT teams to consolidate security capabilities. Gartner has rated us as the leader of Enterprise DLP in its Magic Quadrant for five years running. We are also the top-rated IP protection technology.
The Platform Includes:
Deepest Visibility- We see and correlate user events, system events and data events on endpoints, networks, cloud applications, and databases, giving you a 360° perspective of data movements in your company. It is crucial to protect sensitive data, internal and external.
Real-Time Analytics- The Cyber Infrastructure Inc. Analytics & Reporting Cloud utilizes a cloud-based architecture for big data to aggregate and analyze millions of events from the DLP system, users and data. The events are converted into insights that can be used to respond more effectively to threats.
Flexible Controls- Our platform automates control to prevent data breaches from happening. The controls are flexible and can be tailored to the situation so that they do not interfere with your daily business operations.
