Endpoint DLP, A Comprehensive Data Protection Suite

Whether as part of a full range of solutions or as a stand-alone product, companies are increasingly turning to data loss prevention (DLP) to fill the gaps in data protection. Although most businesses start with DLP networks to achieve the maximum possible range as quickly as possible, the loss of sensitive data is not a problem limited to the network storage or repository from remote users to portable storage, the endpoint is not only an important repository of confidential information, but also a place where users access data most of the time.

However, the DLP endpoint is also the least mature segment of this increasingly popular technology class. Due to processor and memory constraints, we see the biggest difference between competing products and the limitations of the most important features and performance. We also see solutions competing with endpoints from different sources, traditional DLP offerings, portable controllers, and even encryption providers. From a confusing perspective, it is important to know the value of the DLP endpoint, a number of potential features, and the prioritization of your needs.

What is endpoint DLP?

Data loss prevention is defined as:

“Products that, based on central policies, identify, monitor, and protect data at rest, in motion, and in use through deep content analysis.”

We typically use DLP networks to monitor and protect data in network communications, and content discovery to manage data in memory. DLP endpoints differ slightly because they have the potential to handle all three parts of the problem and the entire system running everything from antivirus to business applications, to real productivity that users have to do their job.

Basically, we want to protect and monitor traffic when the endpoint is on a remote network, tracking sensitive data and other users on the endpoint, such as moving the network. Why, we say “basically” is because only a few products offer all these functions in one package, especially when we are looking for advanced content analysis techniques.

Even for a particular function, there can be a dozen different approaches, all of which have different success. We divide the possible functions into four main categories:

• Content Discovery: Scanning of stored content for policy violations.
• File system protection: Monitors and applies file operations as they occur. Mostly this is used to prevent content from being written to a portable/USB medium. Here are also the tools for automatic encryption or the application of DRM rights.
• Network Protection: Monitor and enforce network operation. It provides similar protection to the DLP gateway when an endpoint is outside the corporate network. Since most devices consider printing and faxing as a form of network traffic, and thus it can be improved

Among these categories, a user cover most of the day-to-day operations and that sometimes jeopardize the content.

The main controllers for the DLP endpoints: Protect data from portable storage, protect systems in the corporate network, and support discovery of the device.

Most of the tools available on the market begin with the file and the networking features before proceeding with some of the more complex functions of the GUI / kernel.

DLP specific to the endpoint

From the point of view of data security, a complete DLP suite offers certain advantages, since you can define a single policy and apply it to multiple channels. Instead of having to define privacy rules in a messaging tool and again in an endpoint tool, everything is managed by a single rule server. It is because incident management is also centralized, there is no other administrator who handles data security issues, depending on the location of the incident. Since the performance is limited, the overall package solution supports most of the policies for most customization users, as long as the product supports this when the user leaves the system. The downside of endpoint agents in complete circuits is that they often lack other useful features. For example, they may be weaker to control USB access.

When a non-DLP provider adds a DLP function, only simple regular expressions or predefined categories are added to the existing functions. For example, a portable device control product adds the filtering of files transferred to USB, or the encryption tool adds content-based encryption. Although they do not provide full DLP functionality, they are useful in small businesses and organizations that ultimately only need database protection and do not want the cost or complexity of a complete entire solution. This option also typically does not have a specific management interface for DLP, which can make it difficult to handle incidents.