Enterprises Leveraging DLP Solutions

By Stephanie Jordan
in

Aberdeen Group in its fourth annual study on data loss prevention (DLP) says companies that are “successfully using” content-aware data loss prevention to identify sensitive data and enable remediation to enforce policies have fewer incidents of lost or exposed data and lower operational cost.

“Companies leveraging content-aware technologies improve not only the organization’s ability to share its sensitive data, but also to protect it,” observes Aberdeen Group vice president and research fellow Derek Brink, CISSP. “The research shows that successful implementation of DLP can provide an immediate opportunity for IT security to act as a vitally important enabler for supporting the strategic objectives of the business.”

The report examines how “best in class” enterprises are using data loss prevention technologies, and the associated benefits they have achieved. Metrics include the number of actual incidents of data loss or exposure, the number of non-compliance incidents, and the number of help desk calls. Key characteristics of those organizations include:

  • Discovery of and identification of sensitive data
  • Establishment of consistent policies for data at rest in back-end systems; data in flight on the network; data in use at the endpoints
  • Standardized response to incidents, including enforcement via user-based remediation

The report also notes that areas perceived to have the highest risk of data exposure are related to the endpoints, with deployment of data loss prevention technologies as a tool to help prevent such loss trending towards DLP becoming a baseline technology.

The report, sponsored by Code Green Networks, can be viewed for free until the end of August on Aberdeen’s Web site. 

Published August 12, 2010