With technology that makes sharing easier than ever, data loss prevention has never been more essential. This checklist offers a framework for conducting an effective DLP audit and mitigation.
Compliance should be the foundation of data protection, but protecting business assets like intellectual property and growth strategies requires more sophisticated controls than simply protecting PII or customer credit card details.
1. Data classification
Data classification is at the core of any organization’s data protection program. It determines what policies and controls your team will implement in order to reduce risk from data breaches.
Classifying data involves evaluating information and categorizing it based on its sensitivity level, providing your team with the means to prioritize security controls while strengthening risk management strategies and compliance efforts.
Track Your Sensitive Data In Motion And At Rest: Xenia provides businesses with an invaluable way to track sensitive data in motion and rest, so they can keep an accurate view of all types of sensitive information moving through and around their business. With breaches costing billions in fines every year, accurate knowledge about all the types of data you own – what type it is, who has access to it, its movement through your organization – is paramount for compliance purposes and business efficiency. Xenia provides task assignment and tracking features which allow businesses to assign audit tasks directly to individuals while monitoring progress ensuring accountability and efficiency throughout an audit cycle.
2. Auditing
Audits allow businesses to observe how data is being utilized and where it’s being transferred or sent, helping ensure compliance with standards like GDPR.
DLP does this by analyzing data usage patterns and alerting or blocking any file actions that violate policies, for example if an employee uploads sensitive files into cloud storage systems or shares them externally; DLP can alert or block them to prevent breaches in security.
DLP solutions also offer reports and analytics to assist businesses in identifying areas for improvement and mitigating risks more effectively, including which types of data will be most impacted by DLP policies and determining how much downtime can be tolerated in case of policy violations.
3. Data loss prevention
The Data Loss Prevention Audit Checklist starts by understanding that your business must protect sensitive data such as Personally Identifiable Information (PII), Protected Health Information (PHI), customer financial data and intellectual property such as product designs or trade secrets.
Step two is conducting a risk evaluation in order to identify where, how and when your sensitive data is being stored, accessed, transferred and managed. Finally, solutions should be put in place in order to prevent the transfer of such data outside your business network perimeter.
This process includes using tools to monitor and detect suspicious activities such as unauthorized access to internal files, abuse of privileged user accounts, ransomware intrusions and more. The most advanced DLP systems provide real-time protection of data in use or storage allowing businesses to stay compliant with IT regulations and policies.
4. Monitoring
Nightfall works with healthcare and medical organizations to enhance their DLP policies for HIPAA compliance, helping protect sensitive patient records from being inappropriately accessed by hackers. Our team knows the significance of effective data leak prevention as an ongoing process requiring continuous monitoring and optimization.
Monitoring data movement between systems to prevent leaks requires monitoring how data moves within your organization and between systems. Protect your perimeter with firewalls and proxy servers to limit unencrypted, sensitive data transfers; workstations and instant messenger (IM) security can restrict what users download or upload on their devices; you should track file read, write, overwrite, delete, permission change events real time in real time to identify risky activity as it happens; set alerts based on critical security events to notify appropriate individuals immediately.
5. Training
Data loss risks have serious repercussions for businesses, ranging from financial to reputational damage. By taking effective loss prevention steps to limit these risks and ensure compliance with governmental and industry regulations.
Implement monitoring tools to track and analyze data usage, detect vulnerabilities, and prevent unauthoritative access to sensitive information. DLP solutions can monitor and protect data at rest or transit across networks, endpoints and the cloud to reduce and eliminate leakage of sensitive data.
Training is an integral component of any loss prevention plan. Employee training aims at teaching employees how to secure company assets while adhering to security policies, as well as raising employee awareness of company policies and procedures. Should there be an incident response plan in place in case there is a breach, response efforts can quickly respond and mitigate potential impacts quickly and effectively.