How to ensure having an effective DLP implementation?
Protecting digital assets and intellectual property (IP) is becoming increasingly challenging for organizations. Recent studies describe external hacking as the primary cause of data loss in the corporate world; however, organizations have few mechanisms to assess and report data losses through internal sources.
Data leak prevention (DLP) solutions can effectively help reducing the likelihood that an enterprise’s sensitive data will end up where it shouldn’t, but several deployment issues can severely affect any DLP tool’s effectiveness. In this tip, Cyberarm subject matter experts will offer several best practices to ensure a successful DLP implementation.
Data leak prevention (DLP) tools, along with proper planning, can be really effective in reducing the risk of sensitive data ending up on bad hands, but like any tool, if not used properly, the results won’t be promising and positive. By following our recommendations in this article, organizations can avoid wasting time and money on DLP deployments while ensuring better protection to their information.
Here are some key points that you should take into consideration when deploying any DLP tool:
- Set the right expectations –– One of the most common mistakes that occur when deploying DLP tools is the failure to understand the capability of this technology and how to has to be integrated with your business processes. DLP is not a magical tool but it is all about risk reduction, not threat elimination. It is all about proper planning so as a company you should know what kinds of rules or policies have to be defined and what enforcement options are available before starting the implementation. Later, you should define the right workflows to effectively handle policy violations. HR and legal teams are also highly involved when one of the employees found to be sending some sensitive company information to a competitor. Set a good baseline early; know what data needs protection, the capabilities of the tools in place to protect it, and the workflow for handling incidents.
- Start Small, Improve Later — DLP tools, with bad planning and bad policies, can cause many false positives and can lead to bad results and can affect employees’ productivity. It is better to start the deployment with a simple policy with a limited scope. You should monitor and take time to tune this policy until the expected results are observed, and then expand the deployment by adding new policies and enforcement actions when needed.
- Use the right analysis technique — DLP tools offer various analysis techniques to identify and categorize information. Using the wrong technique will cause many false positives and will make DLP solution less effective in preventing data loss. Companies should be aware when utilizing certain techniques. Utilizing the right content-analysis technique or adding context to a rule can reduce false positives and make DLP more effective.
- Integrate with the right platforms internally — It is very important to ensure that the DLP tool is properly integrated with your company’s directory structure, and use the function that exists in most DLP tools to tie users to their Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) addresses. This will help you in tracking down users and groups accurately inside your organization without pinpointing violations to the wrong people.
- Work tightly with stakeholders, don’t start by taking actions— DLP is not an IT solution that works in silos. It requires tide coordination and cooperation with the managers of business units before deploying any policy. Sit with the units’ managers and collect their feedback to tune the policies accordingly so that you balance business needs and risk management.
DLP tools can help organizations in protecting their sensitive information. Failing to plan and to understand the DLP technology can definitely lead to unexpected results.
CyberArm team have the deep knowledge and expertise to make DLP deployments very successful. We jointly build the right data protection strategy to your organization before starting the deployment. We have several DLP success stories with hotels and banks in the MENA region.
