Today’s technologies make it much more difficult to prevent data loss, which is already a major task. Before, we’ve spoken about how the “outside-in” method of email security has its flaws. Our article, “Email is too vital to safeguard like a TSA checkpoint,” goes into much detail. The sad truth is that this analogy applies to the great majority of DLP strategies. They provide a security checkpoint similar to the TSA’s as if it were part of a well defined and “impenetrable” boundary.
This method disregards the fact that businesses and individuals are constantly adjusting the way they use technology. We expect instantaneous access to data from everywhere, use email more like a filing cabinet than a mailbox, and communicate in an unlimited variety of ways (everyone carries a network-connected camera around with them at all times).
Checkpoint monitoring as a means of preventing data loss is a relic of the past. It is preferable to use a method that safeguards data while it is dormant, in its natural habitat, and employs solutions that do not produce alarm spam for security and do not give consumers difficulties.
What, exactly, is Sleeping Data?
When information is not being copied from one location to another, it is said to be “at rest” (whether locally on a device or on the cloud). You have data at rest if you have a PDF of some kind saved on your laptop. In spite of this, information that is synchronised to a cloud storage service is still deemed to be in transit. Emails are considered data at rest while they are in your inbox, but data in transit when they are sent to another account or downloaded.
For what reasons should organisations prioritise previously collected information?
While traditional DLP systems have focused primarily on protecting data in transit, the storage phase of the data lifecycle now poses a far bigger risk to modern enterprises.
To begin, there is a massive disparity between the volume of data being kept and the volume of data being sent. Email, cloud file storage, customer relationship management systems, and many other sorts of systems hold the vast bulk of the data generated by customers, workers, and tools. Information at rest shows everything, as contrast to data in transit, which just exposes the information being exchanged. For instance, if someone gains unauthorised access to your email account, they will have free reign over the hundreds of messages that are stored there. For IT and security specialists, what recently transpired is considerably more severe than one individual accidentally leaking some internal messages to the public world.
Examining Data Security When in Transit and at Rest
Safeguarding information in motion as part of a solid perimeter defence makes perfect sense. The main reason why it was hard for attackers to access data at rest without breaching the perimeter was that users had similarly restricted access to the data. Strong network security, frequently combined with restricted physical access, slowed down attackers. Yet, it posed issues for the public.
Conclusion
Data accessibility strategies have shifted, if grudgingly in some places, as people have come to see the benefits of making data readily available from anywhere. Yet our safeguards are out of date. Despite the absence of a clear border, several types of security equipment are still on the market. The moment has come to make that adjustment.