A cybersecurity breach exposes confidential information to criminals, who can sell it for big bucks. The consequences for businesses can include fines, financial loss, and a negative impact on reputation.
DLP technology helps organizations prevent data breaches and loss by securing data in motion. This includes data moving to and from devices like email and removable storage.
Defining Critical Data
DLP solutions can help prevent data breaches by identifying and detecting sensitive information and alerting and blocking unauthorized activity. DLP tools can scan databases, cloud storage, physical endpoint devices, and employees’ devices to identify confidential data. They can then enforce granular security policies that prohibit the transfer of sensitive information to outside systems.
To navigate the complexities of cybersecurity effectively, knowing what is DLP in cybersecurity is crucial; this comprehensive approach helps organizations safeguard sensitive information and prevent unauthorized data disclosure.
Companies produce more data than ever, and much of this is sensitive. This creates a rich target for sophisticated hackers looking to steal financial information, trade secrets, and customer data to profit from identity theft and other types of fraud. In addition, many organizations have implemented remote work programs that require staff to store and access data on their devices, increasing the risk of a breach from disgruntled or negligent employees.
As a result of these risks, it is increasingly difficult to monitor and control data as it moves between business systems. Defining your organization’s critical data and prioritizing protecting it is essential. To do this, you should start by cataloging your data. Then, use automated and human techniques to identify sensitive data. This can include finding patterns, using partial document match, or performing statistical analysis of text.
Once you have cataloged your data, you can establish a policy framework to guide all future DLP decisions. These policies should be based on the value of your data and the impact of a loss, such as the sensitivity of your customer information, the impact of losing your company’s intellectual property, or the financial impact of a regulatory fine.
Encryption
DLP solutions can encrypt sensitive data, preventing cybercriminals from using it for their gains. Scanning and monitoring activity can also detect unauthorized attempts to send data, such as emails and files, outside the organization’s network. Some tools can even alert the user to the threat and offer a range of options, such as blocking the transfer, logging it for auditing, or sending a warning message to users that they are sharing PII with an external party (e.g., a breach of cybersecurity firm RSA that compromised 40 million employee records.
Companies can also use DLP to create and enforce policies for handling different categories of sensitive information. This helps secure intellectual property and meet regulatory compliance requirements. It also enables the craft of governance policies that help minimize the risk of data breaches and loss by reducing the number of sensitive information-based attacks.
In addition, DLP can also reduce the risk of insider threats. As the world becomes more mobile and businesses move to remote workforces, thwarting internal threats can be more challenging. A DLP strategy can mitigate these risks by identifying and monitoring sensitive data in the cloud, on endpoint devices, and other locations and implementing granular security policies to prevent accidental or intentional transfer.
User Training
An effective DLP policy raises employee awareness of the importance of data security and sets clear expectations about their roles and responsibilities. It also establishes accountability by clearly defining consequences for noncompliance.
DLP solutions use techniques to detect sensitive information in transit, including pattern matching (e.g., looking for a 16-digit credit card number or nine-digit Social Security number) and content analysis. Some tools may also use artificial intelligence and machine learning to classify data and determine its sensitivity.
In addition, DLP can provide alerts and encrypt sensitive data in transit to prevent accidental or malicious information sharing. It can also create reports to meet compliance and auditing requirements.
To maximize the value of DLP, organizations should regularly discuss and implement new features and capabilities. This enables them to keep pace with evolving threats and ensures the tool is configured appropriately for their environments. It’s a good idea to involve critical stakeholders in the discovery process to give them opportunities to view demos and ask questions.
The security talent shortage is a growing concern, and DLP can help organizations bridge that gap by providing remote extensions of their teams. Managed DLP services perform continuous monitoring and support to help organizations respond quickly to potential breaches or data loss incidents.
Monitoring
DLP is a valuable tool to prevent data breaches and losses from insiders and external adversaries. Adversaries from nation-states, cybercriminals, and disgruntled employees target your organization’s critical data. While data breaches are caused mainly by outsiders, many internal ones happen from malicious attackers or even well-meaning staff unaware of security best practices.
In addition, DLP identifies and protects your most sensitive data by monitoring for anomalous behavior – for instance, when a user moves or copies a confidential file to an unauthorized location. This is especially important as more staff work from home and on mobile devices like smartphones, tablets, and laptops outside the corporate network.
Using regular expression pattern recognition methods to detect sensitive data, DLP can scan for recognizable patterns, such as 16-digit credit card numbers and nine-digit Social Security numbers, alongside indicators such as the proximity of words or characters. Likewise, DLP monitors for suspicious activity, such as malware signatures and traffic from unknown devices.
A good DLP program requires a team of stakeholders from across the organization. Getting critical leaders from engineering, operations, business units, and legal in the conversation is a good idea to ensure the DLP solution fits your company’s goals and needs.
