In today’s fast-growing cloud technology, we need data loss prevention software to protect us from threats. But what a threat is? And how does a data loss prevention system works to stop all those threats? Let’s head straight to find out how data loss prevention software works.

What Is A Data Loss Prevention Software?

As we have discussed in the previous article that data loss prevention is defined as a powerful technique to detect potential threats and data breaches. They prevent data exfiltration transmissions and stop them by monitoring, knowing the nature of the threat, detecting the threat, and finally blocking the sensitive data to keep safe from intruders.

Generally, data loss prevention software does this all. It helps for Endpoint Actions by blocking data while in use, for Network Traffic while in motion, and at rest, it protects Data Storage.

Different software has different strategies to stop data loss. There are a lot of ways in which your data can loses. And it can be anything from an unintentional mistake to an intruder who has preying eyes on your data. Here we are talking about the data stored by a company that has different admin levels.  

The traditional methods are nearly the same for data prevention but for the cloud environment such as Asure, AWS, etc. we need a modern approach.

Let’s see how do these systems work to keep your data safe.

How Does A Data Loss Prevention Software Works?

Core Components Of DLP

To understand how a DLP system works, we need to know about the core components of DLP. 

• The Endpoint DLP: This is the data residing on endpoint devices such as on the desktop, laptop, USB storage, hard drives, and virtual desktops.

• DLP at Rest or Storage: This is a type of unstructured data residing on a cloud server or structured data stored in databases.

• DLP for Network: data that constantly transit or leaving the network to the internet

• Cloud DLP: this is the type of data residing on google drives, office emails, personal email providers, and any place on the cloud.

Understanding these core components is easy but now let’s see how these are used in DLP prevention. 

Pattern Recognition

The main thing that the software uses to detect a data loss is pattern matching. The pattern recognition power of the software decides whether your data is going to a safe place or it is going to 3rd parties.

The basic premise is to understand the difference between the awareness of content and analysis of context. Content awareness includes the capturing envelope and analyzing the content. 

So it analyses the data that is transmitted to one of the above 4 mediums. The context involves the outside factors like the size, header, and overall format of anything that doesn’t include the content of the letter.

DLP Fingerprinting

Another method used by the DLP engines is fingerprinting. Algorithms perform that data and they map the data such as documents and fly to shorter text strings.

Hence these fingerprints give us unique identifiers such as persons logging in and identifying their security. 

It uses this method mainly for document fingerprinting for different securities. Such as government forms, tax documents, employee finance, consumer order forms, contracts, etc.

Also, Read Importance Of IoT Devices In Daily Life.

What makes this software different?

Well, the main thing that distinguishes the strategy of different software among the various DLP vendors is the content engine. These have one main function is pattern recognition. 

The concept of pattern matching handles by the DLP systems using regular expressions referring to as regex. Hence according to the data stored in databases the engine detects patterns in each of the data outgoing. 

For example, credit card numbers, phone numbers, address, etc. is checked by the DLP service to get a pattern. The most commonly checked pattern is the social security number.

There are many other different strategies that a DLP performs. Some more of the techniques are mentioned below. 

• Include Exact Data Mining (EDM)
• Index Document Matching (IDM)
• Inspecting text for all types of sensitive data
• Reframe sensitive data from images
• Inspecting structures and patterns in the text of sensitive data

What Are The Top Data Loss Prevention Practices?

There are a lot of methods in which you can prevent the data from losing. This will provide good practice for data loss prevention. 

No matter how good your data loss prevention software is you should be careful. You should not get into a position where your software has to clear all your logs to save your data. 

If luckily you prevented from loss, still this will ultimately affect your current value and reputation in the company. Here are some practices mentioned below that you should follow for data loss prevention.

• Know everything in your business
• Know your startergies for business
• Research and reevaluate multiple vendors
• Perform regularly “a proof of concept” exercise
• Identify your support team and DLP stakeholders
• Get knowledge about your competitors
• You must have your source code/recipe/formula protected.
• Increase your cloud security and privacy
• Evaluate all internal resources regularly
• Organize an assessment for to keep a regular check
• Make a good classification system
• Establish good data handling pratices
• Also know the nature of your employees
• Educate and aware your employees
• Conduct both the automatic and manual check on your resources
• Have a good knowlege of your market strategy
• Must install a single centralized DLP program

Best Data Loss Prevention Software For You

Data loss prevention software brings you the automatic check and has an eye constantly on your data. Let’s have a look at some of the best software available in the market that provides DLP strategies.

1. Symantec Data Loss Prevention
2. Clearswift Adaptive DLP
3. Solar Winds DLP
4. CrowdStrike Falcon Device control
5. Trustifi outbound shield
6. Check Point DLP
7. Manage Engine DCP

These software DLPs are available and you can use them accordingly. Some have the free trial system also for your trial run. One thing to remember is it is due to our misleading only, unintentional or maybe sometimes intentionally, data loss occurs. It is totally in our hands to bring trust and security to the organization. 

These all software detects and prevents mostly all data from loss but still in some critical cases the software also can’t do anything. Hope you get a lot of knowledge about how the DLP system works and what are the prevention practices.

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