DLP Archives - CT Link Systems, Inc.

How Data Loss Prevention Works: Protecting Your Business Data

June 28, 2024June 28, 2024 Arby News and Events DLP

As businesses rely more on digital information, keeping that data safe from loss, theft, or unauthorized access is crucial. This is where Data Loss Prevention (DLP) comes in. Understanding DLP is vital for any organization that wants to protect its valuable information and maintain trust with customers and partners. Let’s delve on how data loss prevention works, what it aims to achieve, its main features, and why it’s important for businesses in the Philippines.

How Data Loss Prevention Works

Data Discovery and Classification

The first step in DLP is finding where sensitive data is stored. DLP tools scan the organization’s network, including servers, databases, and devices, to locate sensitive information like personal data, financial records, and intellectual property. Once found, this data is labeled based on how sensitive it is, such as confidential, internal, or public. Proper labeling ensures the most valuable information gets the highest level of security.

Real-time Data Monitoring

A key part of DLP is watching data in real-time. DLP tools constantly check data as it’s accessed, used, and moved within the organization. They track user activities and data flows to spot any unusual or suspicious behavior. For instance, if an employee tries to send a lot of sensitive data outside the organization, the DLP system can send an alert and stop the transfer. Real-time monitoring helps catch and fix potential threats quickly, reducing the risk of data breaches.

Policy Enforcement and Endpoint Protection

DLP systems enforce data protection rules by controlling who can access and use data. For example, rules might limit access to certain data for specific users or departments or block sending sensitive information via email. Sensitive data can also be encrypted to protect it from unauthorized access during transfer or storage. DLP tools also control the use of USB drives and external hard drives to prevent data from being taken out of the organization.

It’s important to note that DLP is not a plug-and-play solution when it comes to its rules and restrictions. A common misconception in the Philippine business landscape is that DLP rules can be applied straight out of the box. However, businesses must create and customize their own ruleset to fit their specific needs and workflows. This can initially seem daunting but is crucial for the DLP system to effectively protect sensitive data and meet regulatory requirements. Taking the time to set up these rules properly ensures that the DLP solution works as intended and provides maximum security benefits.

Incident Response and Compliance Reporting

When a data loss incident happens, DLP systems create alerts and notifications. Security teams can then investigate what happened, find the cause, and take steps to fix the problem. A good incident response is crucial for reducing damage and preventing future incidents. DLP tools keep detailed records of data access and transfers, providing an audit trail for compliance. This helps organizations show they are following data protection regulations and internal policies.

Benefits of Implementing DLP

Using DLP solutions can make operations run more smoothly. By automating data protection and watching data in real-time, organizations can lighten the load on IT and security teams, allowing them to focus on more important tasks. DLP makes data security stronger by finding and fixing risks before they become big problems. With features like real-time monitoring, data encryption, and rule enforcement, DLP solutions help keep sensitive information safe from unauthorized access and data breaches.

Another key benefit of DLP is ensuring regulatory compliance. DLP solutions help organizations follow various data protection laws, such as the Data Privacy Act in the Philippines, GDPR in Europe, and HIPAA in the United States. Meeting these regulations not only prevents legal penalties but also builds trust with customers and partners.

DLP and the Philippine Business Landscape

How Data Loss Prevention works in the philippines

For businesses in the Philippines, DLP is crucial because of growing cyber threats and strict data protection laws. Using DLP helps Philippine businesses protect sensitive data, follow the Data Privacy Act, and avoid fines and damage to their reputation. The Data Privacy Act of 2012 requires businesses in the Philippines to protect personal data. DLP solutions help meet these rules by finding, classifying, monitoring, and responding to data issues. Following the Data Privacy Act is essential to avoid legal trouble and keep customer trust.

Although setting up DLP can be challenging and may need extra resources and expertise, it also offers big benefits. Investing in DLP can improve data security, help businesses comply with laws, and give them a competitive edge. As more companies in the Philippines adopt cloud services and digital transformation, strong data protection becomes even more important.

If you and your company are interested in learning more about DLP and other security solutions that can better secure your data, you can contact us at marketing@ctlink.com.ph to set a meeting with our team today!

Tech Talk: Looking at the 3 Main Use Cases for DLP

When discussing Data Loss Prevention (or DLP), many would assume that it is more of a problem for the physical infrastructure. Organizations don’t consider that even the cloud can carry risks of DLP as their mindset of human error or data corruption. We went into more detail in our previous article, that DLP covers more than just that and in the earlier stages was referred more as Data Leakage prevention. This is why when remote work was the only option in the past years, as much as 70% of companies suffered from data loss from sources like data breaches, cyber-attacks, and corporate espionage (as per the HIPAA Journal).

DLP solutions at its core, helps protect your data while:

It is in use – by securing data in endpoints or applications while users actively access them or by controlling access to sensitive data

It is in motion – by protecting data by encrypting it while it is being transmitted or through email and messaging security tools.

It is at rest – by protecting stored data while it is in the cloud, databases or any kind of storage through access control, encryption or data retention policies

From the above examples we can already infer what kind of use cases the DLP solutions solve. Let’s now take a closer look at these use cases.

Personal Information Protection / Compliance

Organizations that collect or store sensitive data like Personally Identifiable Information (PII), Protected Health Information (PHI), Payment Card Information (PCI), etc. is one use case. DLP solutions can help organizations identify, classify, and tag sensitive data while monitoring activities and events. The reporting features as well of most solutions can help provide the details needed for compliance audits.

IP Protection

Another use case would be organizations that have important intellectual property or trade secrets. Losing or having these data stolen could have a tremendous impact on the business and could even mean its inevitable closure. DLP solutions can use context-based classification to monitor data within your network and combined with policies and control, can prevent the unwanted exfiltration of sensitive data.

Data Visibility

Some organizations want to know how their data is moving and how it is being used by their users. A comprehensive DLP solution can help you monitor and track your data whether they are on endpoints, the network, or in the cloud. This allows your IT team to gain visibility into how your individual users in your organization interact with your data.

Prevent Data Loss With Forcepoint

If your company fits any of the use cases above, then DLP solutions such as Forcepoint can benefit your company. Forcepoint not only includes all the solutions given above in each use case but has additional benefits to keeping your data secure. Forcepoint can report and evaluate all incidents generated by your policies and alert you based on their risk score. It also has the flexibility to integrate and support different third-party solutions like Citrix ShareFile by scanning the content and even scan endpoints like laptops to find sensitive data and apply the appropriate policies for them.

If you are interested in learning more about DLP solutions like Forecepoint or if you want to learn more on how we can help implement a DLP solution for you, you may contact us at marketing@www.ctlink.com.ph!

Tech Talk: What is Data Loss Prevention?

June 17, 2022September 2, 2022 Arby News and Events Data loss Prevention, DLP, Forcepoint

As we slowly emerge from the global pandemic, the transition to return to the office have been steadily happening. However, even as we return to the office, working remotely is something that will not be going away anytime soon. With many offices opting to implement a hybrid work setup, data will inevitably be move outside your network perimeter. This has again brought up the issue of Data Loss Prevention (DLP) within many companies in the Philippines.

The term DLP has become a common way to refer to anything related to loss of data. However, data loss is more covered by backup or BCDR solution providers that can help you recover data. Then what do DLP solution providers help solve and why is it finding relevancy now as hybrid work is becoming popular?

How DLP Solutions Protect your Data

Data breaches spiked up during the pandemic due to the fact that many were still adapting to remote work. However, it was not just because of the increase of cyber-attacks like phishing or ransomware, insider threats and user error were also leading causes. It was estimated in 2020, that 23% of data breaches was caused by company users (either by accident or maliciously). This is also why data compliance regulations such as the General Data Protection Regulation Act of the European Union (GDPR) or the Philippine Data Privacy Act of 2012 (DPA) are becoming stricter and increasing their fines.

DLP solutions from Forcepoint help businesses comply with rapidly evolving regulations and help prevent the loss of data from insider threats. They do this through first identifying what data needs to be protected within the organization. An example of this would be banks protecting sensitive information like credit card numbers. By creating policies based on credit card number formats, the DLP solution can then filter and monitor files that go through it and see how they are being used. The DLP solution can then alert you once data containing sensitive information is either:

Being sent through an email
Copied to an unauthorized external hard drive
Uploaded to the Cloud
Being shared through a Web browser

DLP Solutions can also keep track of files that contain sensitive data is changed. If someone from inside the company renames a file with sensitive data before moving it from the above methods, the DLP solution can save that event. So in the case of misuse of data, your company has proof to show. Besides monitoring, DLP solutions can also prevent the loss or leakage of data through its policies so that accidental or malicious loss can be stopped before it happens.

To learn more about DLP solutions like Forcepoint, you may contact us at marketing@www.ctlink.com.ph to learn more!