Advancing Cloud DLP Through Smarter Policies

As Americans go to the polls this week, everyone is once again focused on matters of policy.

When it comes down to it, no matter which candidate you support, most people I know are focused on what types of policies our next president will enact, and how effective those policies will be, when and if they make it into real-world practices.

In the world of data loss prevention (DLP), in particular, and related to the challenge of building and enforcing DLP policies that address today’s evolving cloud security requirements, the issue of policy effectiveness is similarly a critical aspect of ensuring overall success.

Almost a decade after DLP first hit the market and experienced a massive wave of initial adoption, rapidly expanding cloud requirements came along and injected new life into the data protection sector and related use of these platforms.

Whilst DLP had, for many practitioners, become a glorified data classification system, lacking the teeth to perform active enforcement (largely based on fears of interrupting critical business practices), cloud adoption made it such that DLP experienced a major renaissance as organizations scrambled for methods to locate and attempt to control sensitive information heading off premise into SaaS apps and other cloud repositories.

This had a major halo effect on DLP use in general, as, in effect, strategic use of email, network, endpoint, and other “on-prem” DLP finally became a reality, along with the growing adoption of DLP capabilities designed specifically for use in the cloud.

However, today’s mandate isn’t merely supporting growing cloud use, it’s about properly enlisting DLP in the multi-cloud multi-device world. It is about building actionable and contextual DLP policies that account for a huge range of complicated scenarios across cloud-based email, file-sharing, image scanning, and collaboration demanded by a nearly endless array of business workflows, users, and devices.

So how do organizations effectively tackle the evolving cloud DLP policy challenge?

One of the most popular instruments of cloud data protection policy these days is via use of a CASB with integrated DLP capabilities. In its recently published “Magic Quadrant for Cloud Access Security Brokers”, industry experts Gartner noted specifically that leading CASBs must offer dedicated capabilities to identify and control sensitive information using DLP to classify and apply controls to sensitive data.

Here at Lookout, we know that our customers are constantly looking for ways to improve policy efficiency and effectiveness to improve data protection and simplify overall management. Given the complexity of today’s remote collaboration environment, this has only become more challenging, but we have seen many customers experiencing increased success by applying some targeted best practices. Among these proven methods for DLP policy design and enforcement is the use of specific tactics including:

• Employing centralized policies that span CASB and other cloud security controls along with other existing DLP infrastructure
• Classifying endpoints connecting to the cloud, including personal BYO devices, with digital certificates and context-aware policy enforcement
• Protecting sensitive data downloads with policies that trigger integrated Information Rights Management
• Employing pre-defined templates to address global regulations such as PCI, HIPAA, GDPR, and GLBA, etc.

And these are just a few of the methods that we are seeing, in particular, as these are directly supported by the DLP capabilities offered by the Lookout CASB platform.

In an upcoming webinar titled: The Policy Predicament – Getting the Most out of Cloud DLP we’ll seek to outline and offer helpful tips related to many of the challenges facing organizations as they seek to get the most out of their cloud DLP investments.