Comprehensive data security is better than partial

Data breaches are a major issue in the realm of cyberthreats. Enterprises are constantly tasked with preventing the loss or theft of important customer, employee, company, and intellectual property data. On the plus side, the critical necessity to safeguard data is not being ignored. CISOs and information security professionals are continually looking forward to identifying better solutions to handle security concerns that result in data loss, whether via purposeful or careless activities.

In reality, in the era of cloud and digital transformation, CISOs are entrusted with establishing a comprehensive cyber security plan to protect their enterprises from the never-ending threats of data leakage. However, the data protection solutions on which CISOs and information security teams have relied so far only address a portion of the issue.

Legacy methods only provide partial data loss prevention.

Today, most businesses may choose from three kinds of data protection solutions. For the most part, these data loss prevention (DLP) solutions are either inapplicable since they are exclusively intended for big companies, or they offer limited protection due to a broad variety of capabilities that are too difficult, time-consuming, and resource-intensive to use and maintain. 

Let's go a little deeper:

• Legacy DLP: Borne, out of technology created more than a decade ago, most of these solutions run on-premises, forcing IT security teams to install infrastructure and endure high operational costs. Too many manual processes are required to set up and maintain legacy DLP solutions, costing companies time and money while introducing undue risks of human error. These solutions mandate bolt-on overlay technologies that add to the operational overhead required to maintain the primary DLP solution to make matters a notch more complicated.
• Embedded DLP: These solutions exist within single security control points or channels, such as email, cloud apps and public cloud repositories. While embedded DLP solutions are inarguably easier to adopt than legacy DLP and certainly more cost-effective, they pose a peculiar problem: Most protect only one data channel while leaving dozens unprotected. This brings us to...
• Multiple Embedded DLP: Implementing one embedded DLP solution to protect only a single data channel is not optimal. So, enterprises are forced to implement multiple embedded DLP solutions to protect multiple data channels. Imagine the administrative nightmare multiple solutions covering various data channels create for IT security teams: Each solution has its own management console, policy language and data classification system.

A Holistic Approach to Data Security is Required for Digital Transformation

As they begin on their cloud and digital transformation journeys, companies want a comprehensive and centralised data security plan that makes all sensitive and private data simpler to manage and safeguard, regardless of where it resides or travels. Based on the following principles, a complete data security plan alters how, when, and where DLP is used:

• The Principle of Comprehensive Coverage: Data is stored, shared and transmitted from everywhere, be it the network traffic from the devices that your users use or the different SaaS and UCaaS applications they access. Other than your own data centre, various public cloud platforms also store and share sensitive data. A comprehensive data security strategy enables the use of a comprehensive enterprise DLP solution integrated across all control points for all data locations with one central enforcement service, one policy language and its data classification system. Comprehensive coverage comfortably permits compliance to stringent data security and privacy regulations throughout the entire organization on-premises, across remote and hybrid workforces and in the cloud.
• The Principle of Consistent Protection: Not only does data exist everywhere, it also travels via many different channels: mail servers, file sharing apps, cloud email, social media, USB drives, and mobile devices. Adopting a next-generation data security strategy means employing an enterprise DLP solution that guarantees that the same data security policies will work across all data transmission channels and are automatically synchronized for a consistent approach to data protection. On top of that, accurate threat detection saves security teams time from triaging false positives, optimizing incident management and ensuring business continuity.
• The Principle of Highly Accurate Data Detection: A best-in-class DLP should scan many documents and file types, and even extract information from graphic formats like screenshots and pictures via advanced Optical Character Recognition (OCR) algorithms. In addition, it should leverage Exact Data Matching (EDM) to fingerprint and detect specific sensitive data. It should enable the safe use of modern collaboration apps like Slack, Microsoft Teams, Confluence and many others across all users, regardless of their location, by detecting the context of conversation-based data using real-time, natural language processing-based detection methods. User-based document tagging and data classification are also important. When available, DLP needs to be able to detect such classification, read the document properties and apply protective actions based on policy.
• The Principle of Easy Deployment: A next-generation data security strategy employs a cloud-delivered enterprise DLP solution that is natively integrated into all your existing network and cloud control points to rapidly extend the scope of your data protection program everywhere data lives and flows. In doing this, it eliminates the need to invest in new DLP software, servers, databases and proxy appliances, and it reduces administrative costs along with maintenance overhead. The benefit you enjoy is a dramatic lowering of your total cost of ownership in exchange for remarkably cogent and cost-effective data security.