Data can be defined as information stored in a computer. Data is very important in today’s world in almost every field to serve the people better. Every second lot of data is produced, and the data once created online is present in some form on the web. The importance of data is huge in today’s world of online business. It helps to analyze the behavior of consumers, enhance market trends, store information about the customer’s needs, and so on.
Along with its benefits, the responsibility of preventing data also comes in handy. In this article, I have written about data leakage and the steps necessary to prevent data leakage.
There are various Data Loss Prevention Software present to prevent people’s data, insider threats, and hacker’s threat. This data loss prevention software prevents the users from data breach through intentional or unintentional acts.
Following are the reasons for using data loss prevention:
– It helps to prevent Personally Identifiable Information (PII) and smooth functioning of data.
– It helps to prevent the intellectual property of the user.
– It helps to achieve the visibility of data in large organizations.
– It helps to prevent data on remote cloud systems.
How to Prevent Data Leakage?
There is various monitoring software that helps to prevent the data leakage due to intentional or unintentional reasons. Below are mentioned some steps to prevent data leakage: –
Calculate the Possibility of Third-parties
In order to curb the leakage of data, one should ensure that their employees are not at the chance to bear data breaches. It can become difficult to keep track of employees if they are in huge number. In such cases, the data leakage prevention software can be a great remedy for the user as it will prevent the data from leaking on inappropriate sites or other places.
Monitoring Network Access
The user should monitor the data regularly in order to identify suspicious actions. Data leakage is usually done through reconnaissance campaigns, under which cybercriminals identify the defense system that need to be attacked. The user can use cloud-based employee monitoring software to monitor employee activities and keep an eye on their work.
The user should revise the security policies with time in order to build a stronger defense system to stop data leakage.
Identify Sensitive Data
The user should identify all the sensitive data before using Data Loss Prevention (DLP) so that it could be prevented with high security, leading to a better security guard for the data and preventing it from hackers’ sight.
Secure Every Endpoint
An endpoint can be defined as any remote point, which can communicate with a business firm. It includes devices that use the internet, like computers or mobile devices. To prevent data leakage, it is important to ensure the safety of all endpoints. Although firewalls and VPNs give some security, there is a need for greater security to ensure the safety of data. Organizations should train their staff to identify the different kinds of cyber-attacks and how to deal with them. It would help prevent the data from leaking on unwanted sites that can steal an organization’s sensitive data.
Encrypt the Data
Encrypting the data is very important to prevent data leakage as it prevents attacks of cybercriminals. Data encryption is mainly divided into two categories: Symmetric-Key Encryption and Public-Key Encryption. However, data encryption should not be used as the sole method of data leak prevention. Instead, it should be used with all the steps mentioned above.
The methods above can be helpful to a great extent for preventing data loss and increasing the security of one’s data. Data leakage is increasing day by day, and it is very important to curb it and improve data safety. Many cybercriminals are active on the web, and it is very difficult to eliminate all of them. Hence, one should keep track of their data and regularly update its security to prevent their data from malicious hackers and inappropriate sites. I hope the steps mentioned in this article would help you in data loss prevention in 2022. A number of software are now available which prevents the loss of data and increases the safety of one’s device.
By Jospat Mutai, Computing for Geeks
https://computingforgeeks.com/top-steps-for-data-leakage-prevention