What Is Meant by Data Loss Prevention (DLP): Types and Practices

Summary: By encrypting data, monitoring data access and establishing a DLP policy, you can prevent data theft. Let’s find out more practices that can help you prevent data leakage.

With the increase in critical data in the form of trade secrets or customers data, it is difficult to keep them secure and safe from breaches. This is especially true when thousands of authorized users are accessing it every day through various repositories. That’s where data loss prevention tools come into play.

DLP solutions help in preventing data leakage by constantly monitoring it throughout the organization and enforcing security policies. Let’s dive into why these tools matter so much in today’s world of information security.

What is Meant by Data Loss Prevention?

Data loss prevention is a type of security solution that helps in identifying and preventing the inappropriate sharing and use of sensitive data. By using it, you can oversee and safeguard the sensitive data across endpoint devices, on-premises systems, and cloud.

Moreover, it can also help in maintaining compliance with regulations like General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA).

How Does DLP Work?

Data loss prevention solutions use content analysis techniques to identify the sensitive data within documents and content. Once the data is detected, DLP analyzes the data and compares it to the company’s DLP policy. After that, it will highlight whether any violation of policy has occurred or not. The same is notified to respected authorities who take remediation actions to prevent data breaching.

Some of the most common content analysis techniques used by data leakage protection software include Database Fingerprinting, Exact File Matching, Statistical Analysis, Rule-Based/Regular Expressions, etc.

Advantages of a DLP Solution

Using a DLP solution can help you in classifying and monitoring sensitive data. Further, it will also help gain visibility into your organizational data. Some other advantages of using a DLP solution include:

• Detecting and blocking suspicious activities
• Monitoring data access and utilization
• Maintaining regulatory compliance
• Eliminating unauthorized use of sensitive data
• Encrypting files to prevent data breaches

Data Loss Prevention Best Practices

To enhance the data loss prevention within your organization, you must conduct regular security audits and implement incident response processes. Additionally, you can implement the following data loss prevention practices for successful data loss prevention within your organization:

• Utilize Data Encryption: You should always encrypt data in transit and at rest to prevent its unauthorized use.
• Implement IAM: By implementing identity and access management module, you can restrict access to data and avoid its misuse.
• Utilize Anomaly Detection: You can use machine learning and behavioral analytics to detect abnormal behavior that can lead to data leakage.
• Data Classification: To keep your data protected, first you need to identify and classify the data according to your DLP policy.
• Formulate KPIs: You must formulate tracking metrics like incidents numbers and response time to measure the effectiveness of your DLP strategy.
• Use a Patch Management Strategy: It is important to test all the patches of your organization’s systems and devices to ensure that there are no vulnerabilities that might impact your organization data.

Top Trends Leading to DLP Adoption

Due to the changing compliance requirements and threat landscape, it has become imperative for organizations to deploy a data loss prevention system. With it, they can meet the compliance regulations and detect the latest threats deployed by hackers.

Some other reasons why organizations are adopting data leakage protection software are enumerated below.

• The Emergence of CISO Roles: Nowadays, many organizations are hiring Chief Information Security Officers (CISOs) to report directly to the CEO. DLP offers multiple reporting and auditing capabilities that CISO can use to deliver information to the CEO regarding the security framework of an organization.
• More Data to Steal: With digitization, organizations are producing more data than ever that has a significant value. Hackers are evolving their tactics to steal data for profit. However, DLP tools help them in mitigating their cyber-attacks and save their data.
• Security Talent Shortage: There is a higher demand for security professionals to manage the security framework. However, there are not enough skilled professionals for this purpose. Therefore, to fill this gap, organizations depend primarily on data loss prevention solutions to manage their data security related tasks.
• Wider Attack Surface: With the coming of more digital assets like endpoint and IoT devices, hackers are using techniques to steal data from these devices as well. However, by using DLP solutions, organizations have been successful in mitigating cyber-attacks on these devices.

Tips for DLP Adoption and Deployment

To simplify the DLP adoption deployment, make sure you follow these tips:

• Document the Deployment Process: By documenting the entire DLP adoption and deployment process, you will have all the reference materials for your team members to access during compliance audits.
• Define Security Requirements: By defining these requirements, you will be able to safeguard your company’s intellectual property, employees’ and customers’ data from theft.
• Set Roles and Responsibilities: Setting responsibilities will clarify who is accountable, needs to be consulted and informed related to the DLP solution. This will help in eliminating the risk of data breaches.
• Audit Your Infrastructure: Before deploying a DLP solution, make sure you conduct an audit of your infrastructure. This will ensure that your infrastructure is in a smooth working condition before DLP deployment.

Conclusion

In a nutshell, data loss prevention tools are like shields to safeguard sensitive information. They can stop sneaky leaks and keep our data safe from hackers. As technology is growing, these tools will also keep growing and offering features to protect your valuable data in the digital landscape.

FAQ Related to Data Loss Prevention