What are Data Loss Prevention Vendors?

Data Loss Prevention (DLP) vendors provide services and solutions to help organizations prevent sensitive and confidential data from being lost, misused, destroyed, accidentally or purposefully leaked. 

To counter threats from cyber criminals, malicious insiders, security negligence and human error, DLP technologies help identify and classify sensitive assets, monitor their use and movement and take swift action when a potential data leak or loss event is suspected.

The technology provided by Data Loss Prevention vendors helps organizations to protect their most valuable and sensitive data assets, including customer records, trade secrets, business plans, intellectual property, financial data, account credentials, personally identifiable information (PII), personal health information (PHI) and more.

Protecting sensitive documents, confidential information and private data within an organization’s IT environment has never been more challenging. From cloud services and hybrid cloud environments to hybrid workforces and BYOD devices, many aspects of digital transformation have created an expanding attack surface that represents a huge challenge for data security teams. 

At the same time, the consequences of failure to prevent data loss are constantly rising. GDPR, PCI DSS, HIPAA and other regulatory environments constantly evolve, placing new restrictions on how customers’ data may be stored, used, retained, protected and deleted. In addition to steep fines, a significant data leak can result in legal action, severe damage to a business’ reputation, loss of customer trust and a substantial blow to the bottom line.

Within this challenging data security environment, Data Loss Prevention vendors provide solutions that help organizations in several ways.

• Prevent loss and leaks. Solutions and services from DLP vendors combine software and best practices that help organizations stop cyberattacks, neutralize insider threats and guard against unintended incidents.
• Demonstrate compliance. Data Loss Prevention vendors help organizations easily prove compliance with data privacy regulations and satisfy auditors’ and regulators’ demands for adequate security controls.
• Improve visibility. Data Loss Prevention technology provides security teams greater visibility into the sensitive data stored within rapidly changing IT environments.
• Streamline management. With help from superior Data Loss Prevention vendors, IT teams can enhance data security despite facing budget constraints and skills shortages.

Most Data Loss Prevention vendors offer software solutions that combine one or more of the four major types of DLP technology.

• Network Data Loss Prevention systems monitor data flowing in and out of the network to spot any suspicious or anomalous activity. Using security policies that govern how sensitive data may be used and by whom, network DLP solutions automatically perform prescribed actions when a policy is violated, such as preventing an email from being sent or requiring that attachments are encrypted.
• Cloud Data Loss Prevention services monitor data flowing to and from cloud infrastructure to ensure that certain assets are routed to the correct cloud resources and that information is encrypted before uploading. 
• Endpoint Data Loss Prevention software monitors and protects sensitive data on laptops, servers, smartphones and Internet of Things devices. Endpoint DLP solutions can prevent users from accessing data without authorization, sending unencrypted emails, copying or printing protected files, or downloading sensitive information to a USB flash drive.
• Data Loss Prevention for email systems filter inbound and outbound email traffic to look for signs of sensitive data leaving the organization without authorization. Email DLP solutions also scan for phishing attacks and other email scams in data exfiltration attacks. 

Solutions offered by Data Loss Prevention vendors use various techniques to identify sensitive assets at risk of being leaked or lost.

• Role-based or regular expression matching methods search for specific data types such as 16-digit credit card numbers or 9-digit Social Security numbers.
• Structured data fingerprinting analyzes database information to find specific sensitive data and determine if it is adequately secured.
• Exact file matching looks for file hashes that match hashes of sensitive data. 
• Partial data matching helps identify documents that have multiple versions.
• Conceptual or lexicon techniques use various dictionaries and rules to spot sensitive data that other methods may not identify.
• Statistical analysis uses machine learning and other forms of analysis to detect more obscure forms of sensitive information. 
• File checksum analysis evaluates data using hashing algorithms to determine if file content was changed.
• Pre-built categories use compliance standards to create rules that identify sensitive data governed by regulatory requirements.

Recognized as a leader in cybersecurity by Gartner, Forrester and NSS labs, Forcepoint delivers industry-leading data security through a comprehensive software suite. 

As a leader among Data Loss Prevention vendors, Forcepoint provides DLP solutions that protect sensitive data on-premises and in the cloud with technology built for today’s most challenging data security risks. Forcepoint DLP enables security teams to quickly discover, classify, monitor, and protect data intuitively while adding zero friction to the user experience.

With Forcepoint DLP, organizations can:

• Protect more assets. Discover, classify and protect PII and PHI, trade secrets, credit card data, financials and other sensitive business and customer data, even in images. Stop low and slow data theft and track intellectual property in structured and unstructured forms.
• Simplify DLP management. Control all data with one policy, replacing broad, sweeping rules with individualized, adaptive security.
• Streamline compliance. Leverage the industry’s most extensive pre-defined policy library to view and control data and ensure regulatory compliance across 80+ countries for GDPR, CCPA and more.
• Protect more devices. Protect the broadest range of devices, using agentless protection through the reverse proxy to achieve secure access for unmanaged devices.
• Scale easily. Rely on cloud-native DLP solutions built on the Amazon Web Services (AWS) platform to quickly scan large volumes of data and apply custom data patterns to millions of files. 
• Protect cloud platforms. Forcepoint offers solutions for preventing Google G Suite, Microsoft Office and Google Cloud data loss.