Why a Comprehensive Approach to Data Security is Better than a Partial One?

Data has become more pervasive and ubiquitous in the last 10 years. The relentless expansion of data has made it impossible to overlook the fact that safeguarding it in surefire ways is more crucial than ever. 

Terrifying data breaches are a top trend in the world of cybercrime. Enterprises are perpetually encumbered with protecting sensitive customer, employee, business and intellectual property data from leakage or theft. On the positive side, the urgent need to keep data safe is not being left unaddressed. CISOs and information security experts are always looking ahead to find better ways to solve security issues that lead to loss of data, whether it occurs by way of deliberate intentions or negligent actions. 

As a matter of fact, in the age of cloud and digital transformation, CISOs are tasked with implementing a complete cyber defense strategy to future-proof their organizations from the endless perils of data leakage. That said, the data protection solutions CISOs and information security teams have been relying upon thus far only solve part of the problem. 

Legacy Approaches Only Provide Partial Data Loss Prevention

Most enterprises have three common types of data protection solutions available to them today. For the majority, these data loss prevention (DLP) solutions either don’t apply because they are designed only for large enterprises, or they provide limited protection because of a wide range of capabilities that are too complex, time-consuming and resource-intensive to use and maintain. Let’s dig a bit deeper:

1. 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. To make matters a notch more complicated, these solutions mandate bolt-on overlay technologies that add to the operational overhead required to maintain the primary DLP solution.
   

2. 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 ...  

3. Multiple Embedded DLP: Implementing one embedded DLP solution to protect only a single data channel is obviously not optimal. So, enterprises are forced to implement a whole host of multiple embedded DLP solutions to protect multiple data channels. Imagine the administrative nightmare that multiple solutions covering various data channels create for IT security teams: Each solution has its own management console, its own policy language and its own data classification system.

Digital Transformation Requires a Holistic Approach to Data Security

As they embark on their cloud and digital transformation journeys, what enterprises need most today is a comprehensive and consolidated data security strategy – one that makes all sensitive and confidential data easier to manage and easier to secure, no matter where it lives or where it flows. A comprehensive data security strategy transforms how, when and where DLP is employed based on these principles: 

1. 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 center, 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.
   

2. 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.
   

3. 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.

4. 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.
   
   A next-generation DLP solution can secure your company data, no matter where it is located.