Data Leak Prevention (DLP)

What is DLP?

Data Loss Prevention (DLP) is the practice of detecting and preventing data breaches, exfiltration, or unwanted destruction of sensitive data. Organizations use DLP to protect and secure their data and comply with regulations. The DLP term refers to defending organizations against both data loss and data leakage prevention. Data loss refers to an event in which important data is lost to the enterprise, such as in a ransomware attack. Data loss prevention focuses on preventing illicit transfer of data outside organizational boundaries.

Why Force Point?

Data security is a never-ending challenge. On one hand, IT organizations are required to keep up with regulations and protect intellectual property from targeted attacks and accidental exposure. On the other, they must adapt to macro IT movements, such as the adoption of cloud applications, hybrid cloud environments and BYOD trends, all of which increase the ways data can leave your organization.

This expanding attack surface poses the most significant challenge to protecting critical data. Data security teams take the seemingly logical approach to chase data: find it, catalogue it and control it. Yet this traditional approach to data loss prevention is no longer effective because it ignores the biggest variable in data security — your people.

Instead of focusing solely on data, security should begin and end with people. The key is to gain visibility into user interactions with data and applications. Once this is achieved, you can apply a level of control based on the specific user’s risk and the sensitivity or value of the data.

An organization’s data protection program must consider the human point — the intersection of users, data and networks. In addition, the enterprise must remain vigilant of data as it moves across the enterprise and highlight the people who create, touch and move data.