Glossary
DLP
DLP watches for sensitive data trying to escape - someone emailing customer lists, uploading to personal cloud storage, or copying to USB drives. It blocks or alerts on these actions.
What is DLP?
Data Loss Prevention - tools and policies that prevent sensitive data from leaving the organization through unauthorized channels.
Why Should You Care?
DLP directly reduces the financial and reputational cost of data exfiltration by detecting and blocking unauthorized transfers before they leave the network perimeter. Organizations face breach notification costs, regulatory fines (GDPR, CCPA), and litigation when sensitive data escapes—DLP intercepts these incidents at the point of loss, making it a measurable control against insider threats and compromised accounts.
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Real-World Example
A financial services firm deploys DLP to monitor email and cloud uploads and detects an employee attempting to email customer account numbers and routing information to a personal address—the policy blocks the send and alerts security within seconds. In another scenario, DLP prevents a departing contractor from uploading proprietary source code to a public repository by classifying the upload as a policy violation and quarantining the transaction before completion.
How to Protect Against DLP
- 1.
Classify sensitive data in your organization
- 2.
Implement DLP policies for high-risk data
Related Terms
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