Legacy DLP Limitations vs. Next-Gen DLP Capabilities

Data Loss Prevention (DLP) solutions monitor, identify, and protect sensitive information such as financial data, health records, and more. These tools can be used to apply policies to manage sensitive data and prevent unauthorised access or the transfer of data across secure environments. These strict controls can be enforced deciding who can share specific data, therefore minimising the likelihood of data leaks.

However, as technology has advanced, it has become increasingly apparent that there are limitations to legacy solutions, such as traditional DLP. As technology such as AI has become more common, DLP systems are left behind. They lack the expertise in behavioural analysis, meaning that they lack context about user intent, or purpose of data transfers. Their monitoring systems are not always the most reliable, sometimes producing false positives and/or negatives when alerting potential abnormal user behaviour. This can be hard to manage and may create alert fatigue.

DLP solutions are quite simple, mainly focusing on just key words for their detective mechanism. They also provide limited protection for encrypted data as they do not have the capabilities to inspect to this complexity. As a result, when new and emerging threats are becoming more prevalent, legacy DLP solutions cannot keep up.

They are hard to scale up in environments with large volumes of data. Where data is also distributed across various platforms and security models, DLP solutions struggle to provide consistent protection. As a result, they become strained within a multi-cloud or hybrid environment, thus creating the need for a cloud DLP solution.

Key questions: Why upgrade from legacy DLP to next-gen DLP?

1. What is cloud Data Loss Prevention?

A large part of preventing data loss is cloud Data Loss Prevention (DLP). This helps organisations protect sensitive data in cloud environments by detecting, monitoring and preventing unauthorised access. Cloud DLP solutions help organisations maintain compliance with regulatory requirements and prevent data breaches by enforcing data security policies across cloud platforms.

2. Why should I implement a cloud DLP solution over on-prem?

Cloud DLP solutions can automatically scale resources up or down based on demand, providing a flexible solution for optimal performance and cost-effectiveness. Cloud DLP solutions often follow an OPEX model, which eliminates the need for upfront hardware and software investments. Their cost-effectiveness is furthered using flexible pricing models, meaning that you only need to pay for the resources used. They can be deployed quickly, and providers often implement frequent updates to address emerging threats and comply with evolving regulations. This means that they are cutting-edge in comparison to slower, on-prem counterparts. Cloud DLP providers often manage the infrastructure, software updates, and maintenance, freeing up your IT team to focus on core business priorities.  These dedicated security teams offer 24/7 support to assist with troubleshooting and incident response. They diminish the difficulty associated with daily management and can be securely accessed can be accessed from anywhere with an internet connection. This fosters data sharing and collaboration, facilitating secure information exchange between teams.

3. Which DLP solution do Red Helix recommend?

We have partnered with CrowdStrike Falcon Data Loss Prevention to provide a Managed Data Loss Prevention tool. The solution can be integrated with other tools across your security stack into a unified platform for centralised management and threat intelligence sharing. This advanced threat intelligence allows you to detect emerging data security threats. Its cloud-based deployment model is user-friendly, ensuring scalability and simple management. With this tool we provide a comprehensive approach to data security.

Cloud DLP also ensures that this sensitive information remains secure and compliant with regulatory requirements in the cloud. This is increasingly important as compliance regulations such as GDPR, HIPAA, and PCI DSS are becoming the norm.

This is done by leveraging a combination of technologies, ranging from data classification to anomaly detection, to encryption.

Key factors contributing to CrowdStrike Data Protection’s effectiveness include:

1. Analysing the content of data being transferred, and the context of the activity, e.g., the user’s role, application being used, & destination of the data transfer. This helps to identify suspicious data exfiltration attempts even if keywords aren’t present.
2. Utilising advanced machine learning algorithms to continuously learn and adapt to new threats.
3. A cloud-native architecture which is scalable, flexible, and can be rapidly deployed.
4. A comprehensive security solution that can be tailored to specific organisation’s needs.