What is Data Loss Protection?

October 10, 2024
What is Data Loss Protection?

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According to a study led by the British Chambers of Commerce, 93% of businesses go bankrupt in a year if they fail to recover mission-critical data within ten days of losing it. Even more starkly, half of these businesses shut down immediately after such a data loss.

In short, any prolonged or permanent data loss can beget long-term financial strain and operational disruptions. It highlights the importance of implementing robust data loss prevention (DLP) strategies to evade such catastrophic consequences.

In this article, we will dig deeper into the question “What is data loss prevention”.

What is Data Loss Prevention

Data loss prevention (DLP), often implemented as part of a company’s regular data security plan, is a set of comprehensive strategies and tools aiming at tracking down and containing data exfiltration, data breaches, or unwanted leakage of sensitive data. Organisations adopt DLP solutions to mitigate risks and threats to their business-critical data. These solutions can protect both structured and unstructured data a company generates. 

DLP solutions help:

  • Lock out unauthorised access to mission-critical company data
  • Safeguard Personally Identifiable Information (PII)
  • Meet regulations of pertinent data protection act
  • Safeguard confidential information and Intellectual Property of a business
  • Gain better visibility into a large-scale organisation’s data
  • Protect remote/mobile workforce while also securing Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) working environments
  • Protect data stored in cloud systems
  • That said, causes of data loss can be many – hardware failure, human errors, data theft, software corruption, etc.

Importance of Data Loss Prevention

Since digitisation has got a boost, data has become the new currency hackers try to steal. That said, failing to prevent data breaches and data theft can lead to massive data loss costing a business heavily.

Case in point: Data breach – one of the key reasons behind organisations’ losing data – can cost a business around $4.88 billion in a year – a jump of a staggering 10% since the pandemic. The cost of a data breach is expected to only go higher!

Hackers frequently target to exfiltrate PIIs and the Intellectual Property of users for monetary gains.

However, with the cyber threat landscape continuously evolving in complexity and sophistication, data protection has become difficult now more than ever. This difficulty level is doubled down due to organisations storing data of multiple formats in multiple locations handled by different stakeholders.

In addition, organisations must implement different levels and types of protection on various data sets based on their sensitivity level and pertinent data privacy regulation to be enforced.

All these issues and challenges can be addressed effectively using a DLP solution. 

The advanced capabilities to enable robust data protection within a business infrastructure drives the surging enterprise DLP adoption rate, thereby, the DLP market size.

Case in point: The global DLP market size was valued at $1.84 billion in 2022 and is estimated to grow from $2.21 billion in 2023 to a whopping $10.05 billion by 2030. 

This increasing demand can be attributed to a DLP solution’s capability to helping businesses monitor data in rest, at motion, and in use throughout its network and within all applications and software they use:

  • Data in use: DLP systems enable continuous monitoring of endpoint activities of a network to lock out any potential unauthorised access. For example, monitor and control endpoint activities, preventing unauthorised access to users’ sensitive data. For instance, DLP blocks employees without authentication permissions to access, edit, modify, or delete data from a business’s server.
  • Data in motion: Data interception – a type of data theft – is one of the greatest risks businesses face when data transfers take place. With DLP solutions implemented, they can encrypt their mission-critical data in transit to ensure no unauthorised person can decipher it even if it’s intercepted. The continuous communication functionality with DLP solutions also ensures no sensitive data is brought outside the organisation’s network.
  • Data at rest: DLP solutions pinpoint the storage of sensitive data, continuously scan it, and secure it by implementing rigorous security control measures. In addition, with a DLP solution in place, no sensitive data can be copied or transported to and from a company’s own secured system, such as a USB drive. DLP’s capability to employ high-end data protection techniques such as data masking, fingerprinting, and access control, helps organisations pinpoint, monitor and address exfiltration or any misuse of individuals’ personal data – a requirement to comply with all international data protection regulations, such as General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

How DLP Solutions Work

Let’s go through the operating process of data loss prevention systems step by step:

  1. Data Discovery: The DLP process starts with using different scanning tools across endpoints, servers, databases, and cloud systems to pinpoint sensitive data. It can be PIIs, financial transaction records, Intellectual Property, etc. Different data scanning techniques, such as keyword matching, fingerprinting, regular expression matching, etc., are used to discover data effectively.
  2. Classification: After data identification and discovery, the next step is to classify the discovered data based on a range of predefined rules already fed to the system. To ensure data is appropriately classified, DLP tools leverage fingerprinting, pattern matching, and advanced machine learning algorithms. These advanced technologies ensure the data classification engine a DLP solution uses can auto-tag data based on these policies/rules.
  3. Monitoring: Next up is monitoring data in use, at rest, and in motion by DLP solutions. It’s a critical step in the entire DLP journey that ensures no sensitive data is illegitimately accessed or transmitted.
  4. Prevention: DLP solutions are responsible for taking immediate actions and preventing data loss if any suspicious activities are detected in your system network. The typical preventive steps are data encryption, blocking access to confidential data, notifying IT teams, etc.
  5. Encryption: Key security measures a DLP solution implements to prevent loss of data at rest and in transit is data encryption. It ensures no encrypted data can be read even if it’s somehow intercepted.
  6. Policy Enforcement: This step involves enforcing information security policies for DLP solutions for effective data handling. Organisations define these DLP policies that detail their data security requirements and security practices. It should be ensured that the DLP system an organisation has implemented adheres to these policies while handling sensitive data. Thus, it becomes effortless for them to comply with data protection regulations. 
  7. Incident Response: The last step is to enable immediate response to incidents. DLP solutions help dig deeper into a security incident, measure the damage and aftereffects, and help prevent potential similar incidents.

Common Types of Data Loss Prevention Solutions

Network DLP Solution

These types of DLPs are specially designed to fully track data flowing through a network, its inbound and outbound traffic as well as monitor network activities. High-end network DLPs often leverage advanced AI and ML algorithms to pinpoint suspicious traffic or network activity that might indicate a data loss. These types of DLP systems are great at monitoring data in motion. However, they also provide visibility into your data at rest and in use on a network.

Endpoint DLP Solution

Endpoint DLP programs monitor all endpoints a business operates from and the files stored in them to ensure no critical data can be intercepted, exfiltrated, or breached. Endpoint means all devices – mobiles, laptops, tablets, servers, etc. – with access to a business network. You can install these solutions right on the device you want to monitor to track activities on them. It keeps data protected even if data is accessed on personal/unmanaged devices or outside the corporate network, thus augmenting an organisation’s security posture.

Cloud DLP Solution

It’s developed to protect sensitive data stored, processed in, and transmitted or accessed by cloud environments such as SaaS applications, IaaS platforms, and cloud storage services. Cloud DLPs come with high-end data breach prevention functionalities tailored for cloud-first services and cloud-native architectures. For any organisation that leverages cloud storage systems to store their business-critical data, a cloud DLP is a good investment.

Disadvantages of Data Loss Prevention

DLP systems offer substantial benefits. However, it has a few shortcomings that you should consider while choosing a DLP solution for your business:

  • Complex Implementation: Implementing and making a DLP solution perform at its best is a complex task that needs substantial investment, an effort in coordination, and effective planning and configuration to ensure minimum operational disruption.
  • False Positives: Even though rare, DLP systems sometimes exhibit false positives, signalling legal activities as illegal. It sends unnecessary alerts and notifications to designated teams.
  • Complexity: DLP is not a single tool; but rather a combination of different tools that need to be synced and integrated to make the system function properly. Syncing all these tools – network security, endpoint security, and cloud systems – is a highly intricate task requiring expert expertise.
  • Scalability: The DLP solution you pick should be scalable enough to accommodate the increasing volume of data and resources your growing business generates and needs to function properly. That said, failing to scale at pace can result in performance issues and security gaps within the company.
  • Maintenance and Updates: Ongoing maintenance and updates are necessary to keep DLP systems effective against evolving threats and regulatory requirements. It requires dedicated resources and expertise.
  • Cost: Implementing and maintaining a DLP system is a resource and budget-intensive task. It often involves a substantial amount of upfront and operational costs – subscription fees, hardware costs, training costs, etc. A DLP solution is worth your investment considering the high-end data security it can provide; however, for small-scale businesses, managing a DLP may seem burdensome.

Best Practices for Implementing Data Loss Prevention Systems

Consider the following best practices to curate a highly effective and comprehensive DLP strategy:

  • Keep Everything Up-to-date: Keep your systems – applications, software, Os, firmware, etc. – updated to address any potential risk of zero-day vulnerabilities that could lead to data loss. Automatic updates are automatically rolled out to mitigate common security holes. However, an automated patch management system is always recommended if your security team seeks enhanced visibility into the patching process, including patching time, deployment method, content, and rationale.
  • Use Automation: For a large-scale business with multiple physical locations, using automation whenever possible significantly streamlines security activities. Automated solutions help identify and respond to suspicious activities immediately, perform repetitive tasks, and install updates to enable optimised operations.
  • Conduct Regular Audits: Conducting regular security audits helps get a comprehensive overview of an organisation’s overall security posture. It also helps pinpoint and address potential security holes that can lead to data leakage, theft, or exfiltration. Regular security audits are a key step in attaining compliance with data privacy regulations such as GDPR and PCI DSS.
  • Enable Access Control: Another pivotal step in any DLP strategy is securing enterprise data with robust access control techniques such as password protection,  role-based access controls, multi-factor authentication, etc. Thus, you can effectively lock out scammers from accessing your business data while reducing the risk of human-made errors.

Wrap Up

DLP solutions play a pivotal role in identifying and mitigating the potential risks of data leak.  It offers high-end security to business-critical data and helps gain regulatory compliance while saving companies from substantial financial and reputational damages.

Thomas Lambert
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