Data Loss Prevention (DLP) — 3 Ways to Recover Your Data and Your Peace of Mind

Wardah Erum
4 min readJun 29, 2023

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Hey data enthusiasts, what if you wake up to find all your data leaked and breached? Such a nightmare, RIGHT? Well, fear not! We are here with the powerful Data Loss Prevention (DLP) concept.

Undoubtedly, it is your knight in shining armor and your guiding star working day and night to keep your data safe from any accidental or intentional disclosures. Let’s buckle up and see how your (almost) new best friend does all this work single-handedly.

Hop on to keep your data treasure in lock and key through the 3 best DLP strategies.

What is Data Loss Prevention? (DLP)

Lock it down, protect it up, and block the hackers

Data Loss Prevention is a set of strategies, policies, and technologies specifically designed to detect and prevent potential data breaches by monitoring, detecting, and blocking sensitive data, while:

  • In-use (endpoint actions)

When data is in use for business purposes.

  • In-motion (network traffic)

When data is transferred from one location to the other.

  • At rest (data storage)

When data is stored on databases, servers, or hardware.

5 Biggest Data Heists in History

Did you know? It takes around 277 days to identify and contain a single data breach

Unquestionably, large-scale data breaches have been a norm for quite a long time. The 5 biggest data breaches of all time, in terms of impact, are as follows:

1. Yahoo Data Breach (2017)

Date: October 2017

Impact: 3 billion accounts

2. Alibaba Data Breach

Date: July 2022

Impact: 1.1 billion users

3. LinkedIn Data Breach (2021)

Date: June 2021

Impact: 700 million users

4. Facebook Data Breach (2019)

Date: April 2019

Impact: 533 million users

5. Yahoo Data Breach (2014)

Date: 2014

Impact: 500 million accounts

Data Privacy Does Matter — 3 Top Data Loss Prevention (DLP) Strategies

Change your password frequently

Be careful, your data may be NEXT!

This phrase can easily take you off the hook, but hold your horses. You are in protective hands. We have got you covered with these 3 data loss prevention strategies:

  1. Data Backup and Recovery — Plan B Seldom Fails!

Regular data backups and backup retention policies are your best bet for data protection. With the help of reliable backups, you can restore your data loss to cyberattacks, system failures, or accidental glitches.

Data backup, as the name indicates, is creating copies of the original data and saving them at a separate location.

Some key aspects of data backup include:

  • Backup types
  • Backup media
  • Backup frequency
  • Off-site storage

Data recovery is restoring and retrieving lost, inaccessible, or damaged data from the backup.

Some key aspects of data recovery are:

  • Identifying data loss
  • Data restoration
  • Recovery point objective (RPO)
  • Recovery time objective (RTO)
  • Testing and validation

2. Classify Your Data — It Is Not Just for the Chemical Elements

Did you like the periodic table of elements back in middle school? If you are a person who likes everything neatly stacked, then you would surely love the concept of data classification.

Clearly, with the help of a data classification framework, you can categorize your data based on sensitivity, business impact, and regulatory requirements. This will allow you to prioritize and protect your data accordingly.

3. Access Controls and Authentication — This Kind of Control Is Good

Without a doubt, implementing strong access controls for authorized personnel regarding your sensitive data can give hackers a run for their life.

It includes:

  • Two-factor authentication (2FA)
  • Role-based access controls (RBAC)
  • Privileged access management (PAM) solutions.

The Final Wrap Up

Data Loss Prevention or Data Leaking Prevention (DLP) has created quite a buzz in the technology world after major data thefts worldwide from prominent companies like Yahoo, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

Not only DLP has helped businesses but also individuals from data loss dismay. You can keep your precious data safe through access controls, authentication, data backup, and classification.

Have a sound ‘data-protected’ sleep!

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