Data Loss Prevention: An Introduction

In this age where the internet and communication are at their peak, data means a lot to not only individuals but as well as companies. The advancement of technology has made it possible for companies to gather a lot of data, some of which are very prominent to these industries. Any breach or loss of these data can cost these companies a lot

Hence Data Loss Prevention (DLP) has become an integral part of the current world as advancement in technologies has also been marked by an increase in data breaches. Data loss prevention software looks for possible data breaches and forestalls them by monitoring, distinguishing, and impeding delicate information while being used.

DLP is further divided into two categories:

• Enterprise DLP
• Integrated DLP

Let's discuss Enterprise DLP

Enterprise DLP arrangements are thorough and bundled in specialist programming for work areas and workers, physical and virtual machines for observing organizations and email traffic, or delicate apparatuses for information revelation while Coordinated DLP is restricted to make sure about web passages, secure email doors, email encryption items, venture content administration  stages, information arrangement devices, information revelation apparatuses, and cloud access security intermediaries.

Cloud-based services have become integral to various companies hence Information insurance is one of the essential concerns when embracing cloud administrations. The normal undertaking utilizes 1,427 cloud administrations, and workers regularly present new administrations all alone. Breaking down cloud utilization information for thirty million clients, it follows that utilizing the privilege DLP arrangement in the cloud enveloping exactness, constant checking, investigation of information moving, occurrence remediation and information misfortune strategy composing is fundamental for effective cloud selection.

The Necessity for DLP

The multiplication of business interchanges has given a lot more individuals admittance to corporate information. A portion of these clients can be careless or malignant. The outcome: a large number of insider dangers that can uncover classified information with a solitary snap. Numerous administration and industry guidelines have made DLP a prerequisite.

Importance of Data Loss Prevention

Many of these companies deal with the data acquired by their consumers. These data could be of great value to their consumers. Hence leaking of this data is in turn a major setback to consumer privacy.

Hence it should be mandatory for these companies to have a high level of consumer data protection which involves the implementation of DLP. 

DLP is likewise filling in significance due to more current and more rigid guidelines. These guidelines have made it so that companies are heavily penalized if proper consumer data protection is not done or for that matter, any of the consumer data is leaked by the company.

 

Implementing DLP

Firstly it is important to understand that DLP alone is not the solution to all the problems of data protection but certainly it is an indispensable part due to increasing data vulnerability.

DLP as such does not protect from external attacks but stops data from going out in case of a suspected cyber-attack. It can be easily understood by an example. Suppose a bugler tries to enter a house. The house has a guard guarding it and an alarm with the valuable items kept in a locker. So here the alarm and the locker can be thought of as DLP.

DLP also looks for unauthorized access of valuable data, which can be a signal that someone is trying to move or copy the data from the company’s domain to one which is outside of the company domain or a location that is not handled by the company.

While the guard which has been mentioned in the example previously given is like secure web gateways, access control, and firewalls which also play an important role in data protection.

 

How does DLP work?

1. Keyword Matching - DLP can identify some keywords which are very important for a company and stop them from going out of the company domain. Suppose the keywords for a company is Mr. Gibbs.

So if DLP finds any mention of Mr. Gibbs in a particular message or mail. It will act immediately and stop block the mail from going out of the company’s domain.

2. Blocking suspicious activity - Suppose a person from the company is trying to manipulate the system and trying to leak the data which should be kept secret. DLP can stop it from doing so. Some DLP doesn’t allow the user to manually copy-paste the data. While many times it also blocks emails that are trying to export confidential data.

3.       Two important forms of data protection offered by DLPs are:

• Redaction – In which it hides some specific information to stop it from getting leaked. It blacks out that specific part.
• Tokenization – In this, the DLP converts some key information into a token form, each particular token corresponding to a particular value. It sometimes also makes these data visible as a null value. Suppose there is a password 12742997. DLP identifies these passwords and converts them into a special set of characters.

3. Fingerprinting - DLP identifies the confidential information with a set of unique fingerprints that define that data.If DLP identifies any of the pattern matching then it will identify it as valuable data and stop it from getting out of the company.

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