What is DLP - Tips for Small Business Owners about DLP Service
Data loss prevention, also referred to as data leak prevention is a strategy that uses a combination of technology, techniques, and procedures to prevent unauthorized individuals from accessing sensitive information held by a company. DLP also refers to network administrators' tools and procedures to monitor and manage data transmission. This reduces the risk of employees sending secret information outside the company.
Why Do Owners Need DLP Tips for Small Business
The loss of sensitive data and other types of business information can result in major financial losses for a newly started. Of course, now there are lots of ways to prevent data loss. But the business case for DLP is often misunderstood by many enterprises. With this in mind, we've identified some reasons why your company requires DLP. You have no idea what is happening to your company's confidential information. DLP technology gives IT and security employees a 360-degree view of data flow, location, and usage across the organization. You must secure data from threats. DLP helps prevent unintentional access of confidential content across all devices when used in conjunction with complementing safeguards. You'd like to keep an eye on any instances of inappropriate employee behavior and keep forensic data as evidence. Email, instant conversations, keystrokes written, documents read, and apps utilized can all be monitored with DLP technology. You're not sure how secure your company's cloud applications and storage are. DLP recognizes sensitive information and guarantees it is not transferred to unauthorized cloud applications without being encrypted.
Common Causes of Data Loss - Learn Ways to Prevent Data Loss
Data loss is a frustrating experience. Data Loss Prevention is a must to avert this incident from happening. However, you can find a lot of ways to prevent data loss. The initial step would be to determine the primary causes. Data leaks and hacking have become far more widespread. Illegal network visitors can seriously harm your data. If they have direct exposure to your system, they can potentially cause damage to entire network processes.
While some hardware failures are due to wear and tear, others are due to external factors such as:
Excessive heat
Damage caused by fire or flood
Exposition to a magnetic field
Whether it's a surge or a blackout,
Being dropped has an effect
Getting coffee or a drink on your laptop is a regular blunder. Short circuits caused by liquids can damage the computer's electronic parts, including the hard drive. Software failure or malfunction is another prevalent cause of data loss. Any application that requests data has the potential to crash, causing data loss or corruption. Viruses can infect hard drives and corporate networks, causing data to be corrupted. Viruses can also steal, corrupt, encrypt, and erode information. Data could be lost if data was not frequently stored and there was a power interruption while writing a paper.
Types of Data Loss Prevention Solutions
Data loss prevention software comes in three categories: network, endpoint, and cloud. The end effect (data protection) is the same for all three, but the methods employed differ. As the name implies, Network DLP creates a secure perimeter around data in transit on the network. Rather than endpoints, this system tracks and monitors data as it flows across the company's network. When a computer is linked to a network, network DLP solutions are effective, but their protection does not extend to laptops and mobile devices not connected to the network. Endpoint DLP is implemented on each device that houses the network's endpoints. It keeps track of data as it travels to and from these endpoints, no matter where they are or how they're attached to the network or the internet. As a result, endpoint DLP provides more comprehensive security than Network DLP, but it also necessitates more management. Cloud DLP is similar to Endpoint DLP, but it imposes DLP rules and policies on a limited number of cloud accounts. In addition, it works with cloud-based applications like Office 365 and Google's G Suite. This gives your employees the reliability and safety of using cloud apps and cloud storage without the risk of data loss or breach. Finding the correct data loss prevention tool means finding one which strikes the perfect balance between speed, data blocking, and coverage across a range of protocols and rule sets.
Our methodology for Small Business Owners
There are three types of DLP products:
- Perimeter based
- Client-based
- Combined
That being said, here are 5 DLP software programs that are sensational at what they do:
- Fidelis XPS
- Packetsure
- Content Inspector
- GTB Inspector
- McAfee Total Protection for Data Loss Prevention
Findings
All of these products did a terrific job of detecting any harmful files which were sent using specific protocols that they supported. But not all of them supported too many different protocols. Some products weren’t as impressive at blocking the harmful files as they were at detecting them. The products aren’t too awesome when it comes to blocking or analyzing encrypted traffic. Whichever product you choose to go with, you will need to be ready to deal with the network performance hit which accompanies it.
Software
The Content Inspector is the best among these tools when it comes to detection. The configuration of the software was easy. But it didn’t have a wide range of protocols to be blocked. This is why Fidelis XPS should be your best bet here. It has a very easy-to-understand interface, amazing reporting, a flexible set of rules, and amazing detection and blocking capabilities. This tool can really make your life easy. The other software was unrefined when compared with others and required a little more work in order to understand their overall process. But they are still very competitive when it comes to the detection of harmful files and malware.
Installation
DLP vendors usually deploy engineers to your site in order to set up and configure these devices. But even if you decide on trying to do it yourself, it isn’t so complicated that you will not be able to accomplish it yourself. For McAfee, Packetsure, and Content Inspector, the installation is pretty straightforward and the setup is very easy to go follow. For a remaining couple of products, the basic installation is a little difficult and requires various contacts through both the phone and the e-mail. But they can all be easily set up without the need for a technician to visit the site. This also saves you visiting charges in some cases.
After the product is set up and data is passing through, the device can be configured to suit filtering specifications. You can even create sample rule sets that can test the blocking potential and features of each of these products. This is helpful if you are unsure of how to begin testing.
The DLP’s can also be set up in a way that they look for credit card or social security numbers, various pieces of source codes, particular words, and so forth. All of this can be used to prevent any parts of a report from ever leaving the secured network of an organization.
Rules can be set up to check .mp3 files or other formats and/or maximum file sizes. Data sets can be fingerprinted with customer names, social security numbers, and addresses and rules can be set up to block any combination of these three.
With so much to do, there’s no wonder why these different software platforms are in so much demand. So what are you waiting for? Choose one today.
