Cloud data loss prevention (DLP) is the process that protects an organization’s sensitive data from unauthorized exposure, insider threats, and various cyber attacks. Enterprises migrating their data to the cloud en masse has greatly increased the need for protection and visibility within SaaS applications.
Cloud DLP solutions secure an organization’s most critical data throughout its entire lifecycle—lowering the risk of dangerous and costly breaches.
With businesses storing more than 60 percent of their enterprise data in the cloud, and growing, data loss prevention for cloud infrastructure has become top of mind for many security professionals.
Why Is Cloud DLP Important?
Cloud storage providers are only directly responsible for storing your data—not protecting. This means that many organizations are putting their trust in cloud services that seldom meet their data security needs.
Cloud DLP solutions are an important facet of a company’s overall data privacy, security, and governance initiatives—from automatically discovering sensitive data in the cloud to applying access controls for compliance with data protection regulations.
Every organization regardless of size is storing some form of critical employee data, the most heavily regulated being Personally Identifiable Information (PII). Cloud DLP integrates with cloud storage providers to scan servers and audit data already being stored in the cloud, alerting data owners if there is remediation needed.
The potential risk of data leaks in cloud based infrastructure is especially problematic when you factor in the existence of dark data. Unstructured data acquired without an organization’s awareness is a harmful byproduct of most network operations and cloud storage is no different. Cloud DLP allows enterprises to proactively scan, classify, and protect their most sensitive data in the cloud.
Cloud DLP Challenges
Today’s organizations need solutions tailored to their specific needs for maximum protection. The challenge with many cloud storage solutions is the lack of consistent security measures offered.
Oftentimes, enterprises have little to no idea about how their data is being stored and protected within cloud infrastructure. This lack of visibility can leave organizations blindsided and their crown jewel data at risk.
If an organization hasn’t taken steps to secure its data before sending it to the cloud, it can be compromised when cloud based servers are exposed.
It’s not enough for an organization to trust that cloud services providers DLP and other security measures are sufficient for meeting both compliance standards and company security requirements—it needs to be proactive in protecting their data in the cloud.
Cloud DLP – How It Works
Cloud DLP tools discover and safeguard your most sensitive data stored in the cloud. These systems, however, can’t fully monitor an organization’s cloud footprint alone.
Additionally, cloud DLP solutions reduce an organization’s attack surface and classify both structured and unstructured data.
A cloud DLP can find possible data leaks of credit card numbers, customer information, intellectual property, and other potentially sensitive and valuable data using a library of predefined or custom data types.
What to Look for in a DLP Solution
In order to remain productive, organizations must be able to navigate business in the cloud. Adoption of the cloud increases the danger of data loss so finding the right cloud DLP solution is paramount.
When searching for a cloud DLP solution that satisfies the needs of your organization you should find one that fulfills the following key capabilities:
- Detailed data discovery
- ML driven data classification
- Automated data inventory
- Data breach mitigation
- Regulatory compliance and coverage
SmallID’s Approach to Cloud DLP
Today’s organizations require a cloud-native data security solution capable of providing exceptional accuracy in data discovery and classification, quick time-to-value, and flexibility in scale based on their data.
SmallID brings unparalleled native coverage for data across cloud service providers like AWS, Azure, GCP and SaaS apps like Salesforce, ServiceNow, Slack, GitHub, and GDrive.
Businesses can quickly scan data from all of their cloud storage sources, providing them a centralized view of all of their data. This will provide you total visibility across your data landscape, removing weak points and safeguarding your most critical data.
With SmallID, organizations of all sizes can discover and inventory their sensitive data – by type, category, regulation, and more. SmallID includes Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) capabilities with advanced data classification, data-centric remediation while reducing risk, and is a cloud-native, on-demand data security designed for the modern data landscape.
Regardless of your data scan volume SmallID provides flexible pricing tiers to meet your cloud DLP needs.
Schedule a demo with our experts and try SmallID for free today!
To hear more about the implications of cloud data security check out our podcast BigIDeas on the Go featuring special guest Mario Duarte, VP of Security at Snowflake.
