Capabilities Of Modern DLP Systems

The Data Loss Prevention (DLP) technology, as its name would suggest, is geared toward forestalling data leaks. While the essence and purposes of such systems seem self-evident, they have assumed extra conceptual undertones over the years. Besides thwarting deliberate or unintended leaks, modern DLP tools allow organizations to dodge a series of additional security roadblocks.

Any present-day DLP system falls under one of the following categories:

• Classic DLPs that deliver a full range of features to identify and prevent the illicit transfer and analysis of an organization’s proprietary information.
• Solutions with limited functionality that monitor data movements but don’t foil leaks automatically.
• Comprehensive protection systems that come with a DLP component.

The objectives of these different tools overlap partially but aren’t the same. To give you the bigger picture, let’s first cover the stages of DLP evolution.

Driving forces for DLP emergence and advancements

This market niche debuted to fill the void in organizations’ data protection practices in light of increasingly rigid legal regulations. The compliance challenge escalated when lawmakers became highly concerned with data leaks in the enterprise ecosystem and proposed legislation as well as industry standards to safeguard customers’ sensitive information. At that point, providers of cybersecurity services introduced DLP in response to these initiatives.

The second milestone fits the context of securing companies’ trade secrets in addition to the financial details and personally identifiable information (PII) of their clients. This paradigm shift made DLP vendors incorporate extra features for better control over the movements of proprietary commercial data.

The onset of DLP systems that inhibited a wide spectrum of internal threats was another turning point. While averting data leaks as before, these tools facilitate the analysis of security events and help identify incidents. The feature stacks of such systems are typically enhanced by incident management platforms, security operations center (SOC) functions, and other defensive solutions. This form of…