What is Data Loss Prevention | A brief overview

What is Data Loss Prevention :- The data loss prevention are getting more popular in day-to-day life for reducing a risk related to sensitive data expose of any companies or an organization. Every organization seek different ways to reduce the risk of leaked sensitive data outside of the company.

A DLP (Data Loss Prevention) ensure accurate identify the sensitive data and take corrective actions to prevent incidents, make them secure against remediation action. Today’s post mostly focuses on different technologies used for DLP solutions.

Hello friends, today in this blog post What is Data Loss Prevention, I brought a very useful and interesting information for you. It will covers most relevant information about the term What is Data Loss Prevention along with that it also includes  How does DLP work, DLP preventions, different types of DLP and many more.

What is Data Loss Prevention

DLP is a set of technologies and process which used to protect sensitive data of companies or organization from unauthorized accessed, misused, data lost and stop sensitive information from leaving an organization. The DLP tools control an endpoint activity and filter data flows across corporate networks along with this it also monitor data in cloud to protect the data at rest, in motion and in transit conditions.

The DLP acts as a defending the organizations against both data loss and data leakage. Data loss is an event in which business-critical data is lost, for example during a ransomware attack and data leakage are more likely to be occur when sensitive information moves between an organization’s critical record systems.

The organizations mostly use data loss prevention (DLP) to get following benefits & protections:

  • To get data visibility across large organizations.
  • To protect Personally Identifiable Information and relevant regulations of company.
  • To protect organization’s critical  intellectual property.
  • To protect the mobile workforce and improve safety.
  • To secure data on remote systems in the cloud.

How does DLP (Data Loss Prevention) work?

The DLP technologies are uses some rules for collecting confidential information which incudes electronic communications and detection of transfers abnormal data. The main intention is to stop sent out sensitive information accidentally or intentionally outside the corporate network such as: Intellectual property, employees or customers details and financial data.

Simply put a DLP software monitor to looking and keeping data safe inside organization’s network. A DLP software performs three main jobs which are as follows:

  • To monitor and analyze data in every condition either it is at rest or in motion.
  • To detect suspicious activities and abnormal network traffic.
  • To blocks or report suspicious activity and preventing data loss.

Ways to prevent data loss

Use a standard security tools to protect against data loss and leakage as for e.g. Intrusion Detection System (IDS) which having a capability to alert about attackers which try to attempt an access to your confidential data. Antivirus software also helps a lot in preventing compromising sensitive data from attackers.

If you are belongs to any huge organization, then you have to use a assigned DLP tools to protect your data. You can use the Security Operations Center (SOC) plans to assist with DLP. As for e.g. use a Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) system to detect and tie in events that may constitute a data violation.

Categorize your organization’s data set in a definite structured manner so that your data loss prevention policy can easily clarify which data is more sensitive.

Manage your data loss prevention (DLP) policy to targeting a specific type of data or to focusing on automatically identifying and classifying sensitive data to limit issues.

Do the documentation very precisely that, how data loss prevention features perform to ensure their consistent application in helping employees and system to produce better records and provide a good training process to the new members which helps the system to running smooth.

Define DLP Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and other measures to successively track or monitor them closely. It helps in improving the data loss prevention framework over time and demonstrates its business value.

Types of DLP (Data Loss Prevention)

Followings are the main three types of Data Loss Prevention

Data in motion

When sensitive data is in transit condition over a network and the DLP technologies are needed to ensure that these data does not travel outside the organization or into unsecured storage areas.

Data in use

DLP technologies protects data in use which is defined by the data that is being processes by an application or endpoint. This protection generally involve authenticating users and controlling their access to resources.

Data at rest

The data which is neither in motion nor in use but it also needed to be protected. It protect data which resides on various storage media, including the cloud. It implements a controls system to ensure only authorized users access data.

The other main three types of DLP software designed to protect data in different condition are as follows:

Network data loss prevention

It analyzes all the data which passes across company’s network. The DLP software will detect sensitive data existing network only when it will works properly. The network administrators customize network DLP software to block certain types of data from leaving the network by default or by contrast and whitelist the specific type of file or URLs.

Endpoint data loss prevention

Endpoint DLP investigate data on devices and workstations like computer and mobile devices to protect data in use. The effective endpoint DLP software make a difference between suspicious and non-suspicious activities. The software can monitor the device and detect various potentially malicious actions, including Create or rename a file, Printing a document, Copying data to removable media.

Email data loss prevention

Email act as a primary threat vector for almost maximum organizations and there is one thing to worry about that threat vectors security leader are highly concerned about blocking their DLP policy.

Email is a direct potential route through which an organization defenses for anyone wanting to deliver a malicious payload and it also presents a ways for insiders to send out data of the organization’s network, either by accident or on purpose.

It protects against some common and serious causes of data loss such as: Email-based cyber attacks like phishing, Malicious exfiltration of data by employee like insider threats,  Accidental data loss like sending an email to wrong person or attached any wrong file.


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