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FINAL WORD
Data Loss
Prevention: The
Foundation
for a Data-
Centric Security
Strategy
Thomas Fischer, Global Security
Advocate, Digital Guardian, tells
Intelligent CIO how a successful Data-
Centric Security Strategy can be
achieved to allow enterprises to protect
their precious data.
A
s businesses continue to go ‘digital’ we find ourselves in
a perimeter-less world, constant information flow is the
lifeblood of the business ecosystem. Data is distributed
and disbursed throughout the ecosystem, expanding the domain
requiring protection. Adversaries are actively targeting critical data
assets throughout the ecosystem, significantly increasing exposure
and impact to businesses.
Faced with this new reality, protecting your organisations’ most
critical assets, requires a shift in mindset and a data-centric approach
to security. Enter Data Loss Prevention (DLP). Today’s DLP solutions
must protect against insider threats, external attacks and outsiders
posing as insiders.
DLP must protect enterprise data no matter where it resides and
how it is used. It must protect financial information, customer data,
and intellectual property. DLP technologies provide valuable context
that can help enterprises recognise the sensitivity of potentially
compromised data, and then focus remediation and incident
response efforts accordingly.
Success with DLP depends on setting reasonable data protection
priorities, selecting a deployment method and correctly evaluating
vendor solutions.
Step 1: Determine your primary data protection objective
The most important consideration before undertaking a DLP
project is to determine your organisation’s primary data protection
objective. Traditionally, organisations adopt DLP to achieve one of
three objectives:
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