How To Prevent Data Loss

How To Prevent Data Loss

Data loss. While it might sound innocuous enough, data loss is one of the most serious threats facing organizations today. Data loss has wiped billions of dollars off of companies’ values, has eroded brand trust, has resulted in bad publicity and has caused real suffering for thousands of people. 

How to prevent data loss is a question troubling executives the world over. No matter if you are running a multi-billion dollar conglomerate, or a small family office, how to prevent data loss is a key question that we’ll be answering.

What Is Data Loss?

Before we dive in, it’s important to define just what data loss is, in our context. Data loss occurs when data is lost, corrupted, deleted or compromised in any way. Included in data loss are data breaches, which are on the increase as data becomes more valuable.

Famous examples of data loss are:

Causes of Data Loss

Data loss can be caused by numerous factors. Some of the most common include:

  • Hardware or System Malfunctions and Natural Disasters (less relevant now that organizations have moved much information to the cloud)
  • Human Error
  • Software Corruption
  • Viruses and Malware

When looking at data loss, typically the causes of data loss can be divided into 4 main groups:

  • Internal: Intentional
  • Internal: Unintentional
  • External: Intentional
  • External: Unintentional

Internal: Intentional

This is where someone from within the organization causes a loss of data. This could be due to an employee being disgruntled, ideological reasons, or even criminal ones.

Perhaps the most famous example of this type of data breach is Edward Snowden. Snowden copied and leaked classified information from the National Security Agency (NSA) in 2013 when he was a Central Intelligence Agency employee and subcontractor.

Internal: Unintentional

This type of data loss occurs when an employee is negligent or makes a mistake. There are (unfortunately) too many examples of employees inadvertently accessing files they shouldn’t, and deleting sensitive information.

External: Intentional

This is where external actors – who can range from criminals to foreign governments – purposefully infiltrate an organization to steal or compromise data. 

One of the most famous examples of this is where alleged North Korean hackers targeted Sony due to their release of a movie that made a comedy of their leader.

External: Unintentional

With so many tools being interconnected today, data loss for one organization will invariably have consequences for many others in that organization’s ecosystem.

All too often, a company will have excellent data management practices in place, but will be vulnerable if a third party they rely on is compromised. The infamous Target data breach occurred when a refrigeration contractor was compromised.

CenturyLink Beyond DLP™️ as the Answer to your DLP Needs

Clearly, a solution is required that doesn’t just deal with one type of data loss. There are many products that deal only with intentional, external breaches for example. 

CenturyLink Beyond DLP™️ provides a solution that protects companies against all types of data loss. Going beyond traditional DLPs,  CenturyLink Beyond DLP™️ takes a proactive approach to protect data within the company and beyond.

Leveraging artificial intelligence, behavior analysis, and deception techniques, CenturyLink Beyond DLP™️ secures and protects all stages of digital data. The platform was designed to protect data from the inside out, and is purpose-built to differentiate between the two vectors of attack and handle them automatically. 

This includes an external attacker who has passed security layers and is trying to harm, delete or steal company data – and an insider that’s exposing company data outside of the organization either by accident or intentionally.

There are many other reasons why every organization should be using CenturyLink’s Beyond DLP™️  solution, including: 

  • Understand exactly what’s happening with your data at all times with the “Call Home” feature
  • CenturyLink Beyond DLP™️ automatically plants thousands of SoftwareMines™ around your organization’s file storage, both on-premise and cloud. 
    • When a SoftwareMine™ gets opened outside the organization, you will immediately receive critical information about the breach
  • This information can be used to understand exactly what happened in order to improve data security measures within the company and give control back to the Security Department

How To Prevent Data Loss With CenturyLink Beyond DLP™️

While data loss can be a massive threat to your business, preventing data loss is now a whole lot easier. With CenturyLink Beyond DLP™️, you can be protected almost immediately, meet regulatory requirements, and sleep easy at night knowing that you’re protected.

To find out more get in touch!