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Choosing the Right DLP: Enterprise DLP vs Integrated DLP

24.08.2020 Read
Choosing the Right DLP: Enterprise DLP vs Integrated DLP

Data breaches and data loss have been the worst nightmares of the organizations. That is why being able to act proactively and ensure the security of your data has utmost importance. In this article, we will discuss which DLP method you should employ.

Regardless of the size of your organization, protecting sensitive information safe is a monumental task. Each and every single day, the sheer volume of the data you need to protect grows. In addition, both your employees and customers create credential files that need even more attention. Yet the resources of your IT team are, naturally, limited while they have to carry the weight of the whole organization on their shoulders. That is why it is essential to come up with a balanced and comprehensive data loss prevention (DLP) plan that answers all needs of your organization.

In this article, we will explain what DLP is. Then we will discuss what you need to consider before choosing the right DLP plan for your organization.

What is a DLP?

As its name suggests, Data Loss Prevention (abbreviated as DLP) refers to the techniques and methods employed to ensure the safety and security of your data. DLP tools are widely used to monitor such occurrences that can result in data leakage and harm your organization.

When you employ DLP products, you can also benefit from the solutions that target vulnerability detection, prevention and correction as well.

There are numerous DLP tool providers in the market, moreover there are different kinds of DLP tools as well. If you want to make sure that the data of your organization is safe and secure, you need to carefully examine your options before committing to a DLP solution.

How does DLP software work?

It is always a good idea to learn how a software works before purchasing and/or implementing it. That is why we first and foremost advise you to learn how DLP works before making a choice between enterprise DLP and integrated DLP.

Simply put DLP software first identifies a possible data breach through careful monitoring. Then it blocks the sensitive data while it is in motion (through the network traffic), at rest (in the data storage) or in use (through the actions of the end-point user).

A DLP solution incorporates the key elements of several technologies in order to be able to correctly identify risky incidents, sensitive data and leakages:

  • Rule based expressions or regular expressions
  • A combination of rules, dictionaries or lexicons and pre-built categories
  • Statistical analysis
  • Exact data matching (also known as the database fingerprinting)

Enterprise DLP vs Integrated DLP

In order to answer different needs of the organizations, DLP technologies employ different techniques and methodologies. That is why DLP solutions can be classified into two very broad categories: Enterprise DLP and Integrated DLP.

Enterprise DLP offers a much more comprehensive solution with agent software for servers and desktop devices. Moreover, it has different physical and virtual appliances that can be used in monitoring e-mail traffic, network traffic or other appliances.

On the other hand, Integrated DLP offers more compact features that are easy to access: Secure e-mail gateways (SEG), secure web gateways (SWG), data classification tools, e-mail encryption tools, ECM platforms, data discovery tools and CASBs.

How to choose

When you need to choose between Enterprise DLP and Integrated DLP, you can follow the steps below.

  1. Get a firm grasp of your options. Know what you can choose and what makes these options unique.
  2. Consider what exactly your organization needs. You don’t need to splurge on something much more than what you actually need.
  3. Consider the security solutions you already have. The DLP solution you are going to purchase must be compatible with the products and tools you already have implemented.
  4. Keep the emphasis on data classification and data discovery. Don’t forget the fact that data loss prevention is a process that involves more than buying and implementing a DLP tool.
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