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Security pros continue the shift from protecting systems to protecting data, and it's about time. Technologies like data loss prevention purport to help. Here's what you need to know about this emerging discipline. By Randy George, InformationWeek July 4, 2009 New communication channels make it ridiculously easy for employees to lose corporate data. Security professionals understand this and realize that a paradigm shift is under way, from endpoint and network protection toward safeguarding information itself. But as we discuss in our InformationWeek Analytics Report, Risk Intolerant: Defense In Depth And The Rise Of Data Loss Prevention, the trick for IT is keeping multiple constituencies happy. Your knowledge workers want access to their data at any time, on the platform of their choice, using their preferred sets of tools and applications. The CEO wants to ensure your organization won't be the next data loss poster child, without impacting productivity. Auditors want proof that sensitive data is accessed only by authorized users. And the CIO wants some aspirin, because it's shaping up to be another trying budget season. The CFO? Just show her the ROI. Emerging systems for data loss prevention (DLP) can help meet all these mandates. Technology To The Rescue In our report, we discuss challenges early DLP adopters face, informed by our ongoing InformationWeek Data Loss Prevention Rolling Review. We also map out a battle plan, complete with tools, technologies, and best practices that can keep information assets from slipping through your fingers. Perhaps the biggest roadblock right now is gaining funding. DLP products are expensive, but then, so is a data loss incident. Fortunately for security groups, helping ensure regulatory compliance is something DLP vendors are continually focusing on. And as we learned in our InformationWeek Analytics Executive Security Priorities Survey of 326 business technology professionals, when asked about factors that most influence the direction of corporate information security programs, IT directors and executives alike ranked industry and government compliance at No. 1. Our take: Aggressive growth industries all share one thing in common--a catalyst. Remember when oil hit $140 in the summer of 2008, or when the price of gas shot past the magic $4-per-gallon barrier? The ensuing outrage sparked a renewed call for conservation and alternative-energy development. In the case of DLP, the catalyst is clearly the outrageously complex and ever-changing regulatory environment in which we all participate. Funding follows regs. And it's not just public companies--healthcare providers and retailers that need to worry about strict data privacy regulations. Increasingly, the small pizzeria owner in Boston and the city librarian in San Francisco also need to pay attention to state-driven data privacy laws. More often than not, according to our survey on data loss prevention, the need to facilitate and prove compliance with data privacy or other industry regulations is a catalyst for purchasing an enterprise DLP package, along with risk avoidance.

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