Businesses are driven by data. Global organizations need  more than network security to protect their confidential data and sensitive information.The protection of data itself is equally important. In any organization, data is being stored and transmitted across the systems, LAN, WAN and many times in the internet. This creates a major vulnerability within organizations and businesses are recognizing this vulnerability and the need to secure not just the network but also the data that is stored and transmitted across it.

Data Loss Prevention

Data Loss Prevention is the solution mostly sought after for data protection. Data loss prevention is a category of information security tools which helps organizations to prevent the unauthorized distribution or loss of sensitive information. A typical Data Loss Prevention solution should have three main components namely:

• Endpoint Security: Provides the data loss prevention at the endpoint. Many implementations are focused on controlling the connectivity such as Bluetooth, wireless etc. Most implementations controls the USB and other removable media access
• Gateway Security: Next avenue for data loss is through the network gateway.s typically, web gateway and email gateway. People tend to upload files to the internet; a Secure Web Gateway helps you in preventing file uploads, text upload and also could act as a content aware DLP solution. Secure Mail gateway.s allows you to setup what is allowed to sent and what is not. Secure Mail Gateway.s are also capable of acting as content aware DLP solutions
• Storage Security: Protection of data at rest is the third component of a DLP solution.  For example, when an authorized user copies sensitive files to a USB, the storage security component kicks in and encrypts the data protecting the data while at rest

The DLP products alone will not provide complete protection, unless it is backed with strong policies and processes.