DATA LOSS PREVENTION: Definition, Types, and All You Know

Table of Contents Hide

What is Data Loss prevention?
How does Data Loss Prevention Work?
Primary Reasons for Data Loss
How to Maintain Data Loss Prevention
Common patterns and Factors Driving Data loss Prevention Adoption
Best Methods for Preventing Data Loss
Best Practices for DLP Policies
What is the Difference Between DLP and EDR?
How is Data Loss Prevention Implemented?
What are the Functional Requirements of Data Loss Prevention?
Conclusion
Related Articles
References

Data loss prevention (DLP) is a set of processes, procedures, and tools designed to protect sensitive information from being lost, misused, or accessed by unauthorized people.

DLP solutions typically monitor and analyze data traffic to identify and block potential threats. For example, a DLP solution might be configured to block the transmission of sensitive data to unauthorized email addresses or to prevent users from uploading sensitive data to cloud storage services.

DLP solutions, including on-premises software, cloud-based services, and hybrid solutions, are available in various forms. The best type of DLP solution for your organization will depend on your specific needs and requirements.

In this article, we will discuss the different types of DLP solutions, the benefits of DLP, and how to choose the right DLP solution for your organization. We will also provide a comprehensive overview of DLP best practices.

What is Data Loss prevention?

Data loss prevention is a security measure that locates and aids in preventing risky or improper sharing, transfer, or use of sensitive data. Your company can monitor and safeguard critical data across on-premises systems, cloud-based sites, and endpoint devices with its assistance. Additionally, it aids in your compliance with laws like the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA).

Following data protection and management best practices is crucial when securing data. Data management governs a data’s lifespan (how long an organization keeps the data), whereas information protection adds protections (like encryption) around sensitive data. Together, they support your company in understanding, protecting, and managing its data. The information security team has total insight into all data on the network thanks to a sophisticated DLP solution, which includes:

Data in use: Using user authentication and access control, secure the data that an application or endpoint is using.
Encryption and/or other e-mail and message security measures protect sensitive, confidential, or proprietary data in motion over the network.
Data at rest: Access controls and user authentication protect data on any network location, including the cloud.

How does Data Loss Prevention Work?

Data loss prevention software keeps track of, finds, and prevents sensitive data from leaving a company. This entails keeping an eye on both data entering corporate networks and data attempting to leave those networks.

The majority of Data loss prevention software focuses on preventing operations. For instance, permission would be denied if an employee attempted to transmit a work email against company policy outside the corporate domain or upload a work file to a consumer cloud storage service like Dropbox.

Monitoring incoming emails for suspicious attachments and hyperlinks for phishing attempts is the main focus of detection. The majority of DLP software gives businesses the choice of blocking outright conflicting content or flagging it for personnel to manually review.

Security teams established the criteria for detection and blocking in the early stages of DLP, but they were rudimentary and frequently broken.

Primary Reasons for Data Loss

#1. Exfiltration

The act of stealing or forcibly transferring data from a device or network is known as data exfiltration. External or internal parties may carry it out by launching cyberattacks like phishing or DDoS.

#2. Cyberattack

An intentional, malicious attempt to obtain unauthorized access to computer systems (both business and personal) and steal, alter, or destroy data is known as a cyberattack. Ransomware, spyware, and distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) assaults are a few examples of cyberattacks.

#3. Internal Threats

Given that the attack originates from within the organization by an insider, insider threats are particularly serious. Insiders are current or past corporation workers, vendors, and associates in business.

#4. Phishing

Phishing is sending false emails purporting to be from respectable businesses or other reliable sources. Also, phishing attacks attempt to steal or corrupt sensitive data by duping victims into disclosing private information like passwords and credit card details. They may choose to go after a single individual, a team, a department, or a business.

#5. Negligence

Breaches frequently result from negligence by an employee or other party. This can occur for various reasons, including lax security protocols, inadequate cybersecurity training programs, or a failure to implement the Principle of Least Privilege (POLP), which proposes individualized access limitations to sensitive information based on work titles.

To ensure that employees understand the value of protecting not only company data but also their personal data from attackers, businesses must offer extensive cybersecurity training. Businesses should concentrate on educating staff members about best practices for cybersecurity.

#6. Ransomware

Malware, known as ransomware, makes the threat to delete or deny access to vital data or systems unless a ransom is paid. Because attackers utilize their combined knowledge to access a network, human-operated ransomware that targets businesses can be challenging to stop and undo.

How to Maintain Data Loss Prevention

The advantages of DLP start with your capacity to monitor and classify your data and extend to increasing your overall visibility and control. So this is how you go about it:

#1. Monitor and Classify Sensitive Data

It is simpler for your business to spot unlawful access to data and safeguard it against misuse if you are aware of the data you have and how it is used throughout your digital estate. Classification entails following guidelines to recognize sensitive material and keep an up-to-date data security strategy.

#2. Keep Track of Data Access and Usage

You must keep an eye on who has access to what and what they are doing with that access if you want to keep risks at bay. Manage the digital identities of your partners, vendors, contractors, and employees across your network, apps, and devices to stop insider attacks and fraud.

#3. Boost Awareness and Command

A DLP solution enables you to detect who may be transferring sensitive data to unauthorized users and provides you with visibility into the sensitive data within your organization. Additional adjustments can be performed to examine data and content to increase your cybersecurity safeguards and DLP efforts after discovering the scope of actual and prospective issues.

Common patterns and Factors Driving Data loss Prevention Adoption

According to a Gartner estimate from 2022, 35% of data loss prevention implementations are unsuccessful. Such failure can have serious repercussions for a company, such as fines, penalties, and a damaged reputation. These kinds of factors, such as the following, are what propel DLP adoption.

Cost. According to a survey by IBM and the Ponemon Institute, the average total data breach cost was $4.2 million in 2021, a 10% rise from 2020.
Data quantity. Businesses now produce more data than ever, which is quite valuable. Theft of data for financial gain, such as identity theft, insurance fraud, and other economic crimes, is the goal of sophisticated hackers.

Best Methods for Preventing Data Loss

To implement a DLP program, organizations can do several things, such as the following:

#1. Perform an Evaluation and Inventory

Businesses cannot safeguard assets they are unaware they possess. A thorough inventory is necessary. Some DLP devices from companies like Barracuda Networks, Cisco, and McAfee will perform a thorough network search.

#2. Sort the Data

Both organized and unstructured data require a framework for data classification within organizations. These categories include intellectual property, financial data, regulatory data, and personally identifiable information (PII).

#3. Create Policies for Data Handling and Correction

Making handling policies for the data is the next step after classifying it. This is particularly true for areas with tight regulations or where data is regulated, such as Europe with the GDPR and California with the CCPA.

#4. Launch a Solitary, Central DLP Program

Across various divisions and business units, many firms employ several DLP plans. This results in inconsistent protection and a partial understanding of the network. There ought to be a single comprehensive program.

#5. Inform Workers

The majority of activities are unintentional rather than malicious.DLP relies heavily on employee understanding and adoption of security policies and procedures.

Best Practices for DLP Policies

Finding a reliable and skilled cybersecurity partner is frequently the first step in implementing a DLP strategy due to the complexity of the threat landscape and the expansive structure of most corporate networks. Every stage of the program, from strategy and design to implementation and operation, will require the assistance of a committed team of qualified security specialists.

The best practices listed below can help businesses get the most out of their DLP investment and ensure the solution fits their current security policies and procedures:

#1. Identify the Main Goal of the DLP

The best practices listed below can help businesses get the most out of their DLP investment and ensure the solution fits their current security policies and procedures:

#2. Verify that the DLP is in accordance with the Organization’s Larger Security Architecture and Strategy

The organization should consider any current security measures, such as firewalls or monitoring systems, that might be used to supplement this new capability when building and deploying a DLP solution.

#3. Sort and Prioritize the Data

Companies must be fully aware of their sensitive data to protect it more effectively. Companies should conduct data audits and inventories as a standard practice to more readily classify and prioritize this data. They gain a better grasp of which data would worsen the effects of a data breach.

#4. Create Implementation Strategies for any new DLP Solution Tools

To make sure that stakeholders are informed of the tool’s purpose and intended use, these plans ought to engage both IT and information security teams.

#5. Establish a Regular Schedule for the DLP Solution’s Security Inspection

Solutions frequently have new capabilities, features, and functionalities introduced regularly. As new capabilities enter the market, your teams should review, test, and put rollout strategies into action. “Setting and forgetting” is a surefire way to fail since threats, techniques, and strategies alter more quickly than most tools can keep up.

#6. Create Rules for Change Management

To maximize the tool’s use and confirm its use in the organization’s environment, information security teams should routinely communicate with vendors and support teams about configurations and new features.

What is the Difference Between DLP and EDR?

Data in transit is analyzed by DLP, which then compares it to a set of rules or policies. If a message is prohibited, it is stopped at the source. To stop damage from happening, endpoint detection and response (EDR) identifies potential incidents or compromises and reacts to them.

How is Data Loss Prevention Implemented?

You can specify the sensitive information you want to protect, where it is located, and how you want it secured by setting a DLP policy. The DLP software subsequently gets to work, automatically denying access to particular documents or, as an example, preventing emails from being sent.

What are the Functional Requirements of Data Loss Prevention?

A DLP technology must be flexible, functionally rich, widely applicable, and highly effective. To ensure reliable data security for all types of data across all environments and against all data loss risks, it must also offer a high level of efficacy.

Conclusion

In addition to alerting users, some data loss prevention solutions can also enable encryption, isolate data, and quarantine it in the event of a breach or other security problem. By spotting weak points and unusual activities during ordinary networking monitoring, the DLP system helps hasten incident response.