Whenever an organization tries to prevent its data from being passed over to unauthorized persons is quite called Data Loss Prevention. The data can be in use or personal to the owner and he/she does not want to share the data with anyone else from outside due to personal interest. But preventing it from passing it to other people is the hard part. Read below to find out how data leakage happens and how the Data Loss Prevention system works in order to prevent the misleading of Data.

What Does Data Loss Prevention Mean?

Data loss prevention, also known as Data Leakage prevention is the method of preventing the data to pass from one user to another. Because of how much today’s system is dependent upon cloud technology, it is necessary to improve the security of the cloud also.

Imagine a place where all our important data which is stored on the cloud goes into the wrong hands! All the personal information, address, credit card details, and many more can bring fate to cloud technology.

The data can be in your personal workspace or may be shared with government officials. And their security is necessary because cybercriminals will try to gain unauthorized access to your confidential information.

 That is why Data Loss Prevention (DLP) methods are formed in order to prevent different types of data leakages. There are many reasons for data leakage. From server issues to a security breach, we will discuss them all.

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What Type Of Data Are We Talking About Here?

Well, there are many types of data, from daily life requirements to permanent personal information, all are considered. According to different financial and non-financial information, we can classify data in five different ways that can be leaked. 

1. Admin Level Information

Admin’s personal details are considered the most crucial in any of the organization to smooth run the company. No matter how big or small the organization is, its main features are handled by its admins. They can read, write or update any other member’s details directly through their login credentials. They even manage the whole analytics of their particular institution. 

• Username 
• Password
• Admin roles
• Managing history

2. Company Information

Then comes the company information which includes market strategies and optimization data about how to grow their institution up to a top position in the market. This data is important for their own development in the market. If mislead then other company uses this data in order to overtake the competition. Some of the examples of company data are.

• Internal Communications
• Market connections
• Blueprints
• Debug Reports
• Market growth Strategy
• Future growth report

3. Customer Information

Customer information is the most basic information that an institution holds. Generally, it is always in big amount because there are many customers who use the company products. Customer data includes all of these followings:

• Name
• Email address
• Contact Number
• Browsing History
• Profile avatars
• Card details
• Payment history
• Usernames and passwords

4. Trade Strategy And Secrets

This data is so crucial, if leaked then the company can become bankrupt in a night! The trade secrets are the key to any company’s growth and its upcoming future. Other institutions make their preying eyes upon these types of data. Examples are.

• Software making and data structure
• Stock Trading projections
• Algorithms of stock predictions
• Upcoming near future plans
• Property and tax information

5. Analytics

This is the overall data of any consumer that is buying from that particular organization, its behavior, and what suggestions they can give to the customer so he/she will prefer to buy again. Analytics data breaches can include the following

• Consumer history and what he/she likes
• Customer behavior
• Sociographic data

What Are The Types Of Data Leakage?

Accidental Breach

In these types of cases, sometimes the data that is crucial to the company is leaked unintentionally without anyone’s deed. This generally happens when an employee accidentally passes login credentials or any other important information without encryption to other servers. But this mistake can lead to a bigger security breach for the whole company.

Electronic Communication Medium

You all might have heard the term email fraud. That is one of the good examples of the electronic medium data breach. This includes not only the emails but different chat rooms, meetings, websites, or any other social platform where malicious links pass on. Cybercriminals can create and send these links and once opened by the employee or any other higher position person in the company, their data passes on to the intruders. These chatrooms or websites do have encryption and any third-party organization can steal the data by a man-in-the-middle attack.

Unsatisfied Employees

Also known as data exfiltration, this process includes data breaches that the company’s own employees create. The unhappy or unsatisfied with their job, these employees intentionally pass crucial organization information and market strategy with other companies or any outsider. The main reason is the person working is unsatisfied from his/her own company and other people from the outside company give money credits to that employee in exchange for insider information.

Physical Data breach

The employees or any other person at higher authority can create physical data breaches, who intentionally passes important data for their own benefits. There are many endless possibilities about how physical data breaches can happen. This could be any of the types like the person will upload crucial information on their cloud storage and share it to outside medium or make it publicly available for some time.

Divide and Profit Benefits

Generally, this type of data breach is less seen in the market but it still exists. A method that any inferior company follows for its survival in the market. To know the secrets of any successful company, that undistinguished company workers break through the network security and try to get the market strategy of a growing company. This can be done in many ways. One of the direct methods is using physical data breaches without the knowledge of any of the members of a growing company and stealing their data. Another method is to bribe and take information from any of the employees of the working company indirectly and use that information for personal benefits. 

How Costly Can Be A Data Breach?

The average cost of a data breach can be worth millions of dollars to a company. Not only the loss, but a company can face a total bankruptcy in some cases of crucial data breaches. As per the 2019 data, on average a company faces around 4M$ upon a big data breach. This is way more than most company’s total net profit in a year!

Whoever creates the data breach, ultimately the company is responsible for the total data loss. For example, a healthcare company can face up to 100$ to 50000$ fine upon data loss. A credit card processing company has data of thousands of credit cards and people currently use them. Upon data breach and losing any of the credentials, the company can face up to a 1000$ to 100000$ fine.

When Do You Need A Data Loss Prevention System Strategy?

There are many scenarios when you will need a DLP strategy. This includes the above mentioned all data breaches and data losses. It doesn’t matter if any company or a person intentionally or accidentally conducts a data leakage, you will need a DLP strategy. Data Loss Prevention strategy follows many processes and stages to deal with data leakage. It is important to first stop the current leakage from more spreading and then it is all about prevention of data leak in near future. In the next article, we will discuss all the methods and stages of how the DLP system strategy works. 

Conclusion

In Data loss prevention or Data leakage prevention, the overall success depends upon a well-planned DLP strategy and deployment. Proper guidance and leadership will meet all the requirements of a DLP strategy. It is also important to know the business model of the organization for a perfect DLP strategy. The knowledge of where the most critical data is stored is also important for the team of data resolvers during a DLP strategy. As we discussed, there are countless scenarios of data leak and data breaches and its prevention is a must.

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