Guide to understanding Data Loss Prevention (DLP): what it is, how it works and tips

A company’s data is one of its most valuable assets. Whether gaining insight into customer opinions, monitoring market trends, or maintaining its competitive edge, data is crucial to a good business strategy.

However, the immense volume of data that companies generate today means that the threat landscape is also growing, and data protection is becoming more complicated. That’s why approaches such as DLP are essential to protecting sensitive data and the people who handle it. We review what DLP is, how it works, and the reasons why you should implement it in your company as soon as possible.

What is DLP

Data Loss Prevention (DLP) refers to a cybersecurity solution that detects and prevents data breaches. By blocking the extraction of sensitive data, organizations use it for internal security and regulatory compliance.

DLP enables companies to detect data loss, as well as prevent the illicit transfer of data outside the organization and the unwanted destruction of sensitive or personally identifiable data (PII). It also helps organizations with compliance with various local and national regulations.

Its main advantages are:

• Identify sensitive information across multiple on-premises and cloud-based systems.
• Prevent accidental data exchange.
• Monitor and protect data.
• Educate users on how to comply with regulations.
• Automate data classification.
• Monitor data access and usage.
• Maintain regulatory compliance.
• Improve visibility and control.

DLP Security: Types of Threats

Data threats are actions that can affect the integrity, confidentiality, or availability of the organization’s data, while data breaches expose sensitive data to untrusted environments.

The most common threats are:

• Cyber-attacks are deliberate and malicious attempts to gain unauthorized access to computer systems (business and personal) to steal, modify, or destroy data. Cloud security, identity,y, and access management, or risk management are some ways to protect the network.
• Internal risk: misuse of authorized access by employees, vendors, contractors, or partners can adversely affect the organization.
• Phishing: This is the act of sending fraudulent emails impersonating the names of other companies or trusted sources. Its intention is to trick users into revealing personal information in order to steal or damage confidential data.
• Malware: these can be viruses or spyware, which are usually disguised as email attachments or a trusted program. Once opened, it allows unauthorized users to enter the environment and attack the entire IT network.
• Accidental exposure: occurs when employees unknowingly allow access to viruses or unauthorized users. To prevent this, there are identity and access tools, which help control what users can and cannot access, and help keep important organizational resources, such as applications, files, and data, secure.
• Ransomware: is a type of malware that threatens a victim with destroying or blocking access to critical systems or data until a ransom is paid. Human-operated ransomware can be difficult to prevent and reverse, as attackers can make use of their collective intelligence to gain access to an organization’s network.

How data loss prevention works

DLP is a multi-step process that relies on a coordinated effort among several components. Each step plays an important role in the success of the solution in protecting an organization’s valuable data.

Real-time discovery and classification of data

A DLP solution for today’s distributed organizations requires AI and ML-based classification to help with pre-discovery and classification.

An organization’s data can be classified into 3 general categories:

• Low-risk data: includes publicly available information and data that can be easily retrieved or recreated.
• Moderate-risk data: consists of internal data that is important to a company, but does not meet the criteria for high-risk data.
• High-risk data: confidential and sensitive data that should not be disclosed, or that cannot be easily recreated or retrieved.

In many cases, a combination of the basic methods is used to ensure proper classification of the data:

• Content-based classification: uses automation to search for sensitive information in files.
• Context-based classification: uses indirect indicators to classify data, which may include the location of the information, its creator, or the application that used it.
• User-based classification: relies on the user’s knowledge to establish the confidentiality of data. It is a manual process that can be used to complement the classification based on content and context.

Application of data management policies

Data protection solutions should include policy packages that simplify the creation of policies for different compliance requirements and rules on how different classes of data should be handled.

With DLP solutions, the process of enforcing these data handling policies and resolving any issues that arise is automated. This may involve encrypting data before allowing it to be transferred or applying a different policy for business or personal accounts.

Report and analysis

These types of solutions should generate reports and analytical information that can be used to optimize data management policies and address a company’s operational gaps and vulnerabilities.

These analytics can identify the applications that make the most use of high-risk data and can influence how cybersecurity is implemented throughout the organization. As a result, companies must rely on techniques to prevent data loss.

Education of employees

All members of the organization, regardless of department, must be informed about the risks involved in insecure data handling.

End users must understand how they can use data without introducing risk to the company. Regular participation in cybersecurity awareness training courses is therefore very important. This will reduce the likelihood of accidentally exposing confidential or sensitive data that could damage the company and its reputation.

DLP Solutions

Organizations handle more sensitive data than ever before, so security and privacy have become a top concern for businesses. In fact, according to IBM’s Cost of Data Breach Report, compliance failures were one of the three factors associated with the largest net increase in the average cost of a data breach.

So, with increasing pressure to comply with these regulations and rules, organizations are finding themselves with a great need to implement a modern DLP solution that provides immediate value and flexibility to adapt to changing regulations.

In addition, DLP solutions are especially useful when dealing with multinationals, where data management by employees must be facilitated in an uneven regulatory landscape.

If an organization is trying to mature in the field of data protection, implementing a DLP solution will be the best option because, by being context-aware, it enables the automatic collection of information about the use and movement of data in and out of the enterprise, providing the organization with valuable insight and visibility into its data and preventing costly breaches.

DLP Services

With constant data threats, it is important to consider when they will occur, not if they will occur. Choosing a DLP solution for your organization requires research and planning. This investment of money and time will ensure that your sensitive data, personal information, and company reputation are protected.

Knowing the different options and how they work with DLP can help you get started on the road to a safer and more secure data environment:

• User behavior analysis: understand the data you collect from the systems and the people who use them. This will detect suspicious behavior before it leads to a data breach or security vulnerability.
• Education and awareness: adopt a training approach for all your employees so that they learn to recognize and report security incidents and know how to act if a device is lost or stolen.
• Encryption: Maintain data confidentiality and integrity by ensuring that only authorized users can access data while it is at rest or in transit.
• Data classification: Identify what information is confidential and business-critical so that it can be managed and protected throughout the environment.
• Cloud Access Security Broker Software (CASB): Enforces security policy between enterprise users and cloud service providers to mitigate risk and maintain compliance.
• Internal risk management software: identifies which employees may be accidentally leaking data and uncovers malicious insiders who are deliberately stealing sensitive information.

At Plain Concepts we offer you customized governance, protection, and compliance solutions for your organization with Microsoft Purview and our Zero Trust strategy. Moving to a Zero Trust security model doesn’t have to be all or nothing. We recommend using phased approaches, closing the most exploitable vulnerabilities first, covering identity, endpoints, applications, networks, infrastructure, and data.

In addition, we are specialists in unlocking the potential of technology and solving our client’s challenges by applying the latest techniques available. Whether you are unfamiliar with AI or generative AI, don’t know how to apply it, or already know what you want, we can help you accelerate your journey through artificial intelligence with the best experts in the field.

We will analyze where your data is at, explore the use cases that best align with your goals, create a custom plan, create the patterns, processes, and teams you need, and implement an AI solution that is secure, modern, and meets all compliance and governance standards:

• We train your technical and business teams.
• We help you identify the use cases with the greatest impact and best ROI.
• We guide you in the generation of the strategy to launch these use cases effectively.
• We define the infrastructure, security, and governance of services, models, and solutions.
• We develop a strategic roadmap with all activities, POCs, and AI projects.
• We accompany and advise you throughout the process until the final deployment, consumption, and maintenance.

Don’t wait any longer to protect and secure your data!