A key success factor for most of today’s businesses is how they capture, measure, and leverage data. Whether it’s using behavioral data to create personalized customer experiences, or leveraging historical sales data to frame future-looking decisions, data is crucial for helping businesses stand out.
However, as companies leverage this information and use it to support their growth, there’s added risk. Bad actors are drawn to swathes of data they can then use to compromise the organization or its customers and users for financial gain. As such, companies can’t afford to not have systems in place that mitigate data leakage. That’s where data loss prevention (DLP) comes in.
What is DLP?
A data loss prevention program pairs software tools with strategies and processes to stop unauthorized individuals or systems from accessing sensitive data. An effective DLP program monitors and manages data, and has complete visibility over data in various forms and stages, effectively impeding internal users from intentionally or unwittingly sharing data.
To be truly effective, DLP technologies must help protect data while it’s in use, in motion, and at rest. To protect data that’s in use, a DLP program must be able to secure the data that’s in endpoints and applications by using authentication and authorization mechanisms. Data in motion, meanwhile, needs to be protected so that it’s not intercepted by bad actors. As such, information should be encrypted or sent via secure channels. For data that’s at rest — whether that’s in the cloud, databases, or other storage media — a DLP program needs robust data retention policies and access controls.
Why is DLP important?
Having a DLP program in place is vital for organizations that want to reduce their exposure to financial, reputational, and regulatory risk. The 2022 Cost of a data breach report puts the global average cost of a breach at $4.35 million — and that number jumps up to $9.44 million in the United States. For growing businesses, this cost can be devastating, making a significant dent in their potential for success.
A breach can also lead to a drop in customer trust, therefore reducing potential customer acquisition and retention. It can also put an organization at fault from a regulatory perspective, which can lead to additional fines or loss of security accreditation. As such, DLP should be seen as a strategic enabler and growth driver for your business.
What are three types of DLP?
The leading DLP programs account for multiple factors and data access points. As such there are different types of DLP to account for as security teams build their strategies. What follows is a review of three types of DLP software solutions.
Network DLP
As the name suggests, a network DLP solution is designed to help security teams have better visibility into the company’s network and how data moves within it. With an understanding of the traffic within their network, security teams can then establish appropriate security policies to mitigate data loss and ensure compliance. DLP software can then enforce those security policies, using automated actions such as allow, block, flag, audit, or encrypt in response to specific activities.
Endpoint DLP
When it comes to endpoint DLP, the focus is on protecting access to data on endpoint devices such as work laptops and mobile phones. With endpoint DLP, tools monitor data use, storage, and transmission from endpoint devices that have access to critical corporate information. This usually takes the shape of agents installed on the devices themselves, as well as cloud enabled monitoring. This ensures that even though employees may have access to more data than they should, the data is protected from loss and from being misused by unauthorized users.
Cloud DLP
More and more, especially with the growth of remote and hybrid work environments, companies are operating almost exclusively on the cloud. As such, they need cloud DLP programs to ensure business-critical data isn’t lost or misused. Specifically, cloud DLP solutions encrypt sensitive data, ensure that the right data is only sent to the right applications at the right time, and leverage authentication and authorization mechanisms to limit access to sensitive data as needed.
Modern tools should also be able to identify, classify, remove, and modify confidential data before it’s shared to a cloud environment. The goal here is to protect data from bad actors, insider threats, and accidental exposure.
Choosing the right approach for your business
As mentioned above, the best DLP programs are robust and cover all your bases. As such, it’s likely you’ll need a combination of all three of these solutions. That said, it really does depend on how your business operates, the type of data you’re managing, and where you think the potential threats are.