Why Your Company Needs a Modern Data Loss Prevention System

In this article you will learn:

• What the problem is with legacy data loss prevention systems
• How modern data loss prevention works
• How to download a free eBook to learn more about moving to a modern data loss prevention solution

That successful data breaches can have devastating consequences for a business is not new news. The risks from insiders (whether malicious or negligent) are as dangerous to your business as attacks from nefarious outside actors. All threaten to expose sensitive information — personal data/information of customers and employees, financial documents, intellectual property, and so on. This is why your company needs a modern data loss prevention (DLP) system.

Security professionals were once confident that the valuable data they protected was safely tucked away inside heavily fortified data centers. But as businesses, both large and small, undergo digital transformation, moving their data to the cloud and across distributed locations, the demands placed on legacy data protection systems have changed drastically.

The reality is that most legacy data loss prevention tools are not designed to handle cloud and hybrid work use cases, which require integrations and capabilities with cloud services that legacy DLP systems simply don’t readily support.

Consequently, you need to rethink your approach to DLP and consider using modern DLP security technologies. These are systems designed to automatically discover and protect the storage, flow, and use of sensitive data — anywhere across an organization’s networks, users, and services.

The problem with legacy DLP systems

Although legacy data loss prevention solutions have been around for more than ten years, they’ve gained a reputation for being complex to implement and manage. They’re also considered costly, limited in scope, less and less accurate, and not able to provide the comprehensive coverage needed for today’s current work-from-anywhere world.

Legacy data loss prevention software was designed with a perimeter-based security model that assumes all data is stored within the corporate network and managed environments, a model that is no longer sufficient. We are now in the cloud era, when data is stored in multiple cloud-based locations and accessed by users and devices outside the corporate network.

Additionally, legacy DLP systems were not designed to integrate with the wide range of cloud services and infrastructures that are now in use. This makes it difficult, or even impossible, to provide comprehensive protection for data in the cloud.

Adding extra technologies to an outdated DLP approach doesn’t make it cloud-ready; it only adds complexity and additional strain on what might be an already-stretched IT department.

How modern DLP works

To effectively prevent data loss, a DLP system should be integrated and automated to continuously monitor and verify the identity of authorized individuals and devices, their behavior, their collaboration and external data sharing, the applications they’re using and their risks, and many other contextual factors.

A modern DLP system performs several critical functions, including the following:

• Identifies sensitive data wherever it resides and moves, whether it’s data in motion (crossing the Internet, networks, apps, and devices); data at rest (being stored); or data in use (being collaborated on, printed, or faxed).
• Monitors the data environment to detect who’s accessing data and what they’re doing with it. By monitoring actions, DLP can detect incidents — such as unauthorized sharing of confidential information — that may be in violation of corporate policy and take action to address them.
• Automatically takes action to enforce policies by, for example, stopping the data flow, encrypting the data, quarantining the confidential information, or unsharing the data on software as a service (SaaS) application.
• Provides user coaching by automatically notifying users of violations and the reasons behind them, while educating them on safe data-handling practices. Notification also helps to instantly educate users on security policies, reducing the need for incident response teams to manually triage issues.

To read more about moving to a modern DLP solution that supports your business goals and protects your company, download Modern Data Loss Prevention (DLP) For Dummies, Netskope Special Edition.