A Guide to Data Leakage Prevention Tools
Data is your organization’s most important asset, so when it leaks, it’s critical to catch that leak quickly. It’s even more important to prevent leaks from happening in the first place. Data leakage prevention tools can help your team do both of those things, keeping sensitive data where it belongs: in your organization’s systems.
What Do You Get with Flare’s Data Leakage Prevention (DLP) Solution?
How does Flare help your team find data leaks?
There’s no data leak siren. No red lights go off when data has been stolen, unsafely shared, or accidentally pushed to a public GitHub repository. In many cases, your team may have no idea data has been exposed. For this reason, monitoring the web for leaked credentials and data is critical but doing it manually is an overwhelming task. It’s time-consuming, tedious, and your team runs the risk of making errors.
Flare automates the scanning process, monitoring the clear & dark web 24/7, so your team can find data leaks immediately and take action before threat actors are able to exploit any vulnerabilities.
What are the key benefits of Flare’s data leakage prevention tools?
- A proactive security stance: You might not be able to stop every leak, but by actively seeking them out, you can catch breaches and accidental data exposures early.
- Visibility into your data leaks: Flare’s data leak monitoring solution scans the dark and clear web, as well as illicit Telegram channels, to find leaks before an attack happens.
- Continuous monitoring: No one person can scan the web for leaks around the clock. Using a solution that scans for you gives you 24/7 coverage, so you will know as soon as information is leaked.
Data Leakage Prevention: An Overview
What is Data Leakage Prevention?
Data Leakage Prevention, also called Data Loss Prevention (DLP), is an security solution that detects and and prevents:
- Data breaches
- Data loss
- Exfiltration
DLP solutions might prevent leaks at the individual level, the network level, or may scan for leaks that have already occurred.
What is a data leak?
A data leak occurs when sensitive, confidential, or protected information is disclosed to unauthorized individuals. While the term “data leak” is associated with insider theft or cyberattacks, leaks aren’t necessarily malicious. Data leaks can be accidental, such as the misconfiguration of cloud storage or unsafe sharing by well-meaning team members.
How can data leakage be prevented?
Mitigating the damage of a possible leak requires a combination of education, strong security controls, and a proactive culture of security:
- Encrypt code: Developers often collaborate on projects. If your team is distributing code across several platforms, be sure they encrypt data to keep it safe from malicious actors.
- Require strong authentication: Best password practices are critical. Threat actors are hoping your team is lazy with their passwords, reusing old ones or using the easy to guess passwords.
- Harden your infrastructure: Sometimes a leak happens, despite the best preparation. To mitigate harm, strengthen your infrastructure, so that attackers can’t find vulnerabilities to exploit.
- Scan to identify leaks: It’s critical to look for leaked code before a breach or an attack. Scan software for malicious or harmful code that may have been inserted. Search public GitHub repositories for accidentally or maliciously leaked code. Continuous scanning of sites like Pastebin and monitoring the dark web can also help to quickly identify leaks and suspicious activity.
Why Do You Need DLP in Today’s Cybersecurity Landscape?
Data leakage is increasing, and 2023 was a record setting year for data theft. Last year, 3,205 data compromises were reported, impacting an estimated 353,027,892 victims. Those numbers are 78% higher than they were in 2022. With so many threat actors trying to steal data, it’s important to catch any data leaks as soon as you can.
What can happen if data is leaked?
If a data leak is exploited by a threat actor, an organization can experience severe consequences. These include:
- Financial loss due to regulatory fines, legal action, and remediation costs
- Reputational damage, leading to a loss of customers, partners, and investors
- The interruption of operations, and loss of income
- Loss of intellectual property
What is the impact of a data breach?
According to reports, the average cost of a data breach peaked in 2023 at $4.45 million. The majority (82%) of those data breaches featured information stored in the cloud. Smaller businesses tend to face higher costs from data breaches, and those costs are often passed along to the customer. Reports find that after a breach, organizations tend to raise prices of goods and services.
DLP and Flare
Flare provides the leading Threat Exposure Management (TEM) solution for organizations. Our technology constantly scans the online world, including the clear & dark web, to discover unknown events, automatically prioritize risks, and deliver actionable intelligence you can use instantly to improve security. Monitor data leaks with Flare to keep your organization’s information safe and secure.
Our solution integrates into your security program in 30 minutes to provide your team with actionable intelligence and automated remediation for high-risk exposure.
See it yourself with our free trial.
