What is Data Loss Prevention
Data loss prevention (DLP) is a field of tools, techniques, and methods that protect your data. DLP is especially intended to keep sensitive data from leaving your company. Data loss prevention is about preventing critical data from falling into the wrong hands. In addition, it prevents misuse and abuse by unauthorized parties. When you’re running a business that handles sensitive information, DLP is essential.
DLP software classifies different kinds of business data and detects violations of policies. Organizations can set their own policies in DLP software to customize their protection. They come with premade policy packs, too. Once the software finds a violation, it informs the right people and takes other protective actions.
Do I Need DLP?
Every business that works with data will have similar goals. For example, you want to protect personal and sensitive data, intellectual property, and track your data. Here’s how data loss prevention (also known as data leak prevention) helps in those areas:
Personal and Sensitive Data
If your organization stores personal information, health information, or payment information, you need DLP. If you store this data, you must prove compliance with certain regulations. HIPAA is one such regulation you may have to comply with. DLP’s reporting helps you stay compliant, making audits easier.
Intellectual Property Protection
Trade secrets and other sensitive IPs are important to protect. If these leaked – For example, if you’re a media company producing a film – It could seriously affect your business. You lose out on income, and your reputation and future business take hits.
Data Tracking
DLP empowers you to protect your company data across devices and platforms. You can watch data movement across laptops, smartphones, tablets, email, and the cloud. You can even get more granular, and see which users interact with data.
There are even more use cases for Data Loss Prevention. In addition, other areas of your company can benefit, such as preventing insider threats. You can learn more about insider threats on our website, an area we’ve covered extensively.
Why are People Adopting Data Loss Prevention?
Today, the DLP market is worth over $1.8 billion. As the market and demand for data security evolve, it is expected to reach $3.5 billion by 2025. This is not a new market but continually evolving and growing. Cloud functionality, threat detection, and mitigation services have helped it grow. As major data breaches increase, the demand and the need for DLP will continue to grow.
Because DLP is so useful when it comes to staying compliant with data protection mandates, you may not have a choice eventually. If your company has a Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) position, your company will benefit from DLP. The reports provide regular updates to everyone who needs them.
Choosing, setting up, and training for data loss prevention can be difficult. Yet, this is an essential task for businesses with sensitive data. If you don’t yet have data loss prevention at your company or would like to update and improve your program, give us a call. Empowering your employees to track data and learn best practices is a worthy investment. Arruda Group takes pride in our ability to do just that.
