Data Loss Prevention (DLP) is a key component of a company’s security strategy. Focusing on preventing data from being leaked, stolen or lost, DLP is made up of tools, techniques, and professionals who can protect data across multiple locations, including on-prem or in the cloud, and while at rest or in transit.

Having a strong DLP strategy in place ensures your data is protected from bad actors and over-exposure, minimising the chances of your sensitive data being leaked or breached. A great DLP tool will help you identify where your data is stored, monitor user activity, and understand how large your attack surface is.

Businesses can benefit from DLP software for a number of reasons:

1. Protecting your customer and employee data is crucial, especially in an age of sophisticated cyberattacks. DLP tools can help you protect one of your most valuable assets, and ensure customers and employees are not put at risk.
2. Maintaining compliance with data protection regulations such as GDPR, HIPAA, and CCPA can be difficult if you don’t know where your data lives. However, having a DLP strategy in place can help you with data discovery, as well as limiting sharing permissions, setting retention periods, and more.
3. Keeping your trade secrets under wraps is vital for the future of your business, but data leaks can expose your intellectual property, allowing your competitors insight into your plan for success.
4. Data loss prevention software can help save your company money and time, as well as maintaining your excellent reputation. While data breaches can come with hefty fines, lawsuits, and brand damage, DLP can be used to minimise your attack surface, and keep your data protected.

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There are four main types of data loss prevention:

1. Cloud DLP: Protects data stored in cloud-based applications such as Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, and AWS. It allows the security team to understand who has access to data stored in cloud environments, and can encrypt information for an extra layer of protection. 
2. SaaS DLP: A subset of Cloud DLP, SaaS DLP is solely concerned with data stored in SaaS apps such as Slack, Google Drive, and Microsoft Teams. It detects sensitive data, giving you visibility over where it’s stored within files, assets, and chats. 
3. Network DLP: Focuses on controlling data as it moves across the network, including via email or in the cloud. It blocks unauthorised assets being uploaded and shared, and gives security professionals the visibility they need to identify where sensitive data lives, and who has access to it. 
4. Endpoint DLP: Installed on to physical devices such as laptops and mobiles, Endpoint DLP monitors data to see where it is stored, and if it has been moved. It can help to classify sensitive data so the right data protection policies are put in place to prevent leakage.

DLP works by aligning your data security policies with what is actually happening across your organisation.

For instance, if you have decided you don’t want credit card details stored in cloud environments, your data loss prevention software will scan data within assets stored in the cloud to identify credit card details, and decide whether the context of where they’re stored matches the policies you want to enforce.

With most DLP solutions including Metomic, you’ll have access to out-of-the-box classifiers such as email addresses, phone numbers, social security numbers and more, that you can put in place, or you can create your own custom classifiers to suit your needs.

Once a violation has been identified, DLP tools can alert security teams in real-time to any suspicious behaviour, and depending on the rules you have in place, can block actions completely, redact data entirely, or set a retention period so that the data can still be used before it expires.

DLP vendors such as Metomic can also provide security awareness to your staff, building a Human Firewall for your organisation. With real-time employee notifications, your team can understand where they may be going wrong when it comes to uploading sensitive data.

Finally, DLP tools make it easy for security teams to provide detailed reports and audit logs, allowing them to investigate any issues, and maintain compliance records.

Any company is at constant risk of data being stored in the wrong place; if that data is seen by the wrong people, a plethora of problems can arise. Introducing DLP software into your workplace is crucial as most companies have too much data for any one person or team to manage. Without DLP software, you can’t always make sure you’re 100% protected.

DLP software brings a lot of benefits, and is worth investing in if you’d like to:

• Ensure your sensitive data is protected and minimise your risks when it comes to data breaches and leaks
• Make it easier to maintain compliance with data regulations like GDPR, HIPAA, and CCPA
• Protect valuable intellectual property and trade secrets
• Bring a competitive edge by securing customer data
• Reduce your attack surface by minimising the amount of data you hold
• Enforce your security policies among your team
• Spot insider threats and anomalous behaviour quickly
• Educate your team on data security best practices in a highly efficient way

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Metomic approaches data security from a user experience perspective, making it easy to manage sensitive data within your SaaS applications.

Bringing your entire SaaS stack together in one easy-to-use platform, we help you protect your data, without impacting employee productivity. Unifying your user experience for every app, we help you understand where your sensitive data is stored and who has access to it, as well as helping you remediate any violations against your data security policy.

Book a personalised demo with one of our SaaS Security Specialists to see how it could work for your business.