Data Loss Prevention Software

What is data loss prevention (DLP) software? 

Data Loss Prevention (DLP) software is a solution that organizations can use in their security practices to help safeguard sensitive data and adhere to compliance regulations.

Using a predefined policy pack that meets regulatory standards, DLP classifies sensitive data and monitors endpoint activities and networks to detect and prevent data breaches. This helps to ensure data is not lost, stolen, or compromised by internal or external threats.

Types of data threats

Organizations face a wide range of data threats that necessitate data loss prevention software. These include both internal and external risks, such as:

• Accidental data leaks: Employees may unintentionally send confidential data to the wrong recipients. This can also involve uploading sensitive information to unauthorized cloud services or mishandling data on their devices.
• Malicious insider threats: Disgruntled employees or contractors may deliberately attempt to exfiltrate business-critical data, bypassing access control systems or misusing unauthorized access. These insider actions often result in a costly security incident.
• External cyberattacks: Cybercriminals exploit vulnerabilities in networks, applications, and user behavior to access and exfiltrate protected data. This increases the overall security risk across the organization and could potentially trigger a data breach.

Types of DLP solutions

Data loss prevention solutions are categorized based on where and how they monitor data within the IT environment. Knowing these categories helps organizations build stronger security information management and regulatory compliance strategies.

• Network DLP: Focuses on monitoring and protecting data in motion across corporate networks, including web traffic, cloud services, and email. It can detect and block unauthorized applications transmitting sensitive information, helping prevent data leaks before they occur.
• Endpoint DLP: Installed on user devices, this solution protects data at the point of creation. Endpoint DLP monitors actions like copy-paste, USB transfers, and screen captures. They mitigate the risk of accidental exposure or intentional data breaches.
• Cloud DLP: As businesses adopt cloud-based tools, cloud-native DLP protects sensitive information in shadow IT applications and ensures regulatory compliance. It offers visibility into shadow IT assets to prevent leaks across dispersed teams and environments.

Must-have DLP features and capabilities

A DLP solution should help your security team work more efficiently to respond quickly and appropriately to potential threats. Look for these essential features in DLP software:

• Data visibility: Your DLP solution should be able to monitor all of your organization’s data, regardless if it’s at rest or in transit, including devices, endpoints, cloud environments, etc. To effectively protect data you need to have a clear view on all the data that exists. Ideally, a DLP solution will have these discovery capabilities and user-friendly dashboards that provide a global view of all data movement.
• Prioritize risk based on context analysis: Context is key when monitoring data access and movement. A DLP should offer context that is quick and simple for analysts to understand to help prioritize risks that need immediate action. By providing multi-dimensional context related to a file, source, exfiltration destination, and user, a DLP solution can help your organization contextualize the risk of any activity.
• Appropriate response: Flagging a threat is important, but a DLP solution should proactively initiate a fast, right-sized response based on the risk. Controls should include video-based policy reminders, endpoint and cloud prevention techniques, and integrations that support endpoint isolation, conditional access, and orchestration automation.
• Federal Protection and Compliance: A DLP solution should have built-in functionality to help ensure your data protection practices are compliant with regulatory standards, including support for FedRAMP.

DLP policy adoption and best practices

Adopting DLP policies requires strategic planning, team education, and alignment with security incident response protocols.

• Start with data classification: Identify and label types of sensitive information such as customer records, IP, and financial data. This helps build targeted DLP policies that comply with frameworks like HIPAA, PCI-DSS, and GDPR.
• Enforce shadow IT controls:Monitor and manage unauthorized applications and shadow IT assets that operate outside formal access control. A comprehensive security policy that includes detection and mitigation helps reduce data leak risks.
• Train and educate users:Human error remains one of the top causes of security incidents. Regular training helps users understand how to safeguard sensitive information, recognize phishing attempts from cybercriminals, and avoid accidental exposure during daily operations.

Benefits of data loss prevention software

Data loss prevention software can protect your most valuable information from being leaked accidentally or for malicious purposes. From private financial information and customer data to future business plans and intellectual property, much of your business-critical data exists in digital form and can be easily leaked via email. A superior data loss prevention software solution can protect your information by stopping email leaks before they happen, helping you to avoid the cost of fines and legal fees, and the even greater costs of loss of customers and business opportunities.

Selecting the right data loss prevention (DLP) solution for your organization is critical. Your data leakage prevention software must be easily managed, to avoid adding yet more administrative burden to your IT team. It must be comprehensive enough to provide DLP protection across the entire organization, while not affecting the productivity of users. And it helps immensely if your data loss prevention software can be implemented quickly and easily, without significant capital cost.

Data loss prevention software from Mimecast

That's where Mimecast can help.

Mimecast's cloud-based services for email security, archiving and continuity include powerful data loss prevention tools, available via a subscription service. Mimecast's data loss prevention software lets administrators create policies for email content that can enforce secure communications and stop leaks in outbound traffic in real-time.

With Mimecast data loss prevention software, you can:

• Protect business-critical data from being inadvertently or maliciously leaked.
• Comply more easily with regulations such asPCI-DSS, GLBA and HIPAA by setting granular content and DLP policies.
• Roll out DLP solutions quickly, thanks to Mimecast's SaaS-based services that require no on-premise hardware or software.
• Centralize and simplify administration of DLP policies to reduce the burden of managing data loss prevention software.

How Mimecast's data leakage prevention tools simplify security

Mimecast's data leakage prevention tools allow administrators to define and manage DLP policies from a single web-based console. Because any aspect of an email may pose a risk, Mimecast examines the subject line, headers, body text, HTML and attachments for all inbound and outbound email, searching for anything that may violate DLP policy. Mimecast data leakage prevention tools can also remove hidden metadata from Microsoft Word documents to reduce the risk of unintentional leaks. In addition to tools for data leakage protection, Mimecast email security services include protection from advanced targeted threats, cloud based email filtering for malware and spam, and tools for sending emails and large files securely.