Enhancing DLP

What exactly is DLP? The general consensus is that DLP technologies worth their salt should include some form of content awareness. Was recently at the Gartner Security Summit and Eric Ouellet made a strong case for it - if you get a chance to see the presentation, it is very well worth it and provides a great overview.

Also, just read a good article in CSO Magazine by Bill Brenner on technologies that can extend the value of DLP. Am glad that folks are seeing the value of encryption within a data leakage context and am encouraged by the comment by William Pfeifer about the requirement to protect the data at all times and not just at rest. This, I believe, is the right information-centric approach.

One point I think Bill might have missed is the value of Identitiy technologies (IAM) to enhance DLP as well. I strongly believe that the combination of IAM+content-aware DLP+persistent encryption can solve (from a technology perspective) many of the challenges we face. This gives control over roles, the content itself as well as completing the action of protecting the data by enforcing specific access control triggers within the data itself.

Aha - true "discover once, protect forever" :)