What is DLP?
What is Data Loss Prevention (DLP)?
Data Prevention Loss is an array of tools and processes implemented due to the prevention of sensitive information loss, misusage, and unauthorized user access.
DLP software protects regulated, confidential, and crucial data under policies of an organization or preset policies driven by judicial regulations like PCI-DSS, KVKK (Personal Data Protection Law of Türkiye), GDPR, and ISO 27001. In addition, DLP classifies data for an organization’s requirements. DLP issues warning notices so as to prevent end-user from deliberately or unintentionally sharing or leaking data that endangers an organization. DLP software and tools monitor and check endpoint activities, and filter data flow within corporate networks. In addition, it monitors archived or in-use data in cloud storage for protection. Lastly, DLP provides reporting so as to meet compliance and auditing criteria, and to identify weaknesses and anomalies for incident response.
Three main use cases
Does an organization need DLP?
Three main uses of DLP
Data loss prevention (DLP) addresses three common problems sophisticated below:
Personal Information Protection / Compliance
If an organization collects and stores personally identifiable information, protected health information, and payment card information, the organization is absolutely bound to observe compliance regulations like KVKK (Personal Data Protection Law of Türkiye) and GDPR (for EU citizens) which urge to protect customers’ sensitive data. DLP is able to identify, classify and tag sensitive data, and monitor activities and incidents encircling that data. Moreover, mentioned capabilities of DLP can fulfill requirements for compliance audits.
IP Protection
Does an organization is in possession of the intellectual property, and commercial and state secrets that could endanger the organization’s financial health and brand integrity in case of being stolen? DLP solutions can classify intellectual property data in both structured and unstructured forms through context-based classification. With policies and supervision, an organization can prevent those prominent data to be leaked unintentionally.
Data Visibility
If an organization is pursuing further visibility on data movement, a thorough enterprise DLP solution could help to monitor and track data on endpoints, networks, and the cloud. This could deploy an organization with visibility on data interaction of individual users.
These are three main uses of DLP. However, the functionalities of DLP cannot be limited to above mentioned. DLP can also remediate various problematic points including sophisticated threats through entity behavior analysis.
Why DLP?
Why Data Loss Prevention?
Seven Key Points Urging Adoption of DLP
DLP is not a novel technology yet the increasing trend in massive data breaches has laid foundations for the immense adoption of DLP as a sensitive information protection tool. Seven key points urging wider DLP adoption
Growth of the CISO role
01
Organizations have started to hire chief information security officers (CISOs) who report to the CEO. CEOs desire to know an action plan in order to prevent data leaks. In this sense, DLP offers a clear perception, and it enables relevant reporting capabilities for CISOs so as to provide updates for the CEO.
Changing Compliance Mandates
02
National data protection regulations continuously change, and an organization shall be prepared. Within the past couple of years, the Digital Transformation Office of Türkiye has published an information security guide, and organizations are charged with additional obligations. DLP solutions offer organizations relevant flexibility to develop with evolving regulations.
More Places to Protect Data
03
Data protection has been made more complex thanks to the increased use of the cloud, complicated supply chain networks, and uncontrollable services. Establishing a mechanism for screening visibility and progress of data before leaving an organization could prevent sensitive data from getting into the wrong hands.
Frequent and Immense Data Breaches
04
An organization’s sensitive data is targeted thanks to a plethora of motives such as cyberattacks, espionage, personal financial gain, and political advantage. DLP can protect an organization from every kind of rivalry whether it is intentional or not. Lately, thousands of data breaches and security incidents have occurred. Press organizations can experience the same fate with giant corporations of which data has been stolen and leaked.
Marketing Stolen Data
05
Stolen data is usually sold on Dark Web to be exploited for the personal interests of individuals or groups. There is a financial encouragement for data theft thanks to certain data types sold for up to a few thousand U.S. Dollars.
More Data to be Stolen
06
The concept of sensitive information has been developed over years. For the time being, sensitive information encompasses non-monetary assets like pricing models and job methodologies. The presence of corporate-related confidential information illustrates that a mass of data shall be protected than assumed as long as an organization exists.
Extraneous Approach to Cybersecurity Budgets
07
The effects of cutting the cybersecurity budget can be observed in an organization. It is a common problem that senior management does not prioritize cybersecurity while most security vulnerabilities could be prevented through budgeting and monitoring.
