Data Classification in Data Loss Prevention

The main reason behind data classification is to be ensured that we should know what data we have, how sensitive it is, where it is located, etc. Yet, despite how important it is to get all this information, it is a data security platform that is overlooked often. And then DLP (data loss prevention) comes into the picture. It is used to protect against unauthorized discovery of internal data- especially sensitive data. DLP and data classification can be worked simultaneously to keep your important data safe & secure.

What Does Data Loss Prevention (DLP) Software Do?

The solutions of data loss prevention (DLP) are different from one vendor to another. Some of the solutions are Intrusion Detection System (IDS) to evaluate network traffic for breaching activities, while other solutions may include Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) solution, which is used to find out and correlate activities from network hardware and applications.

How Data Classification Works

Data Classification is not a manual process since there are so many cost-effective, easy-to-use tools that can find out and classify automatically a wide range of data types like Protected Health Information (PHI), Personally Identifiable Information (PII), Payment Card Information (PCI), and many more.

Most of the data classification solutions have default settings that are best to fulfill the needs of data privacy laws.

The solutions of data classification work by incorporating Metadata into the original data. This kind of Metadata can have its sensitivity level, the author of data, the file format, its generation time, and any other important information that can be utilized by our selected DLP solution. To utilize this metadata, the administrator should set up the access control first.