When Data Is a Risk: Data Loss Prevention Tools and Their Role within IT Departments

Snowden is a reversal point for IT security and risk. Before him, many saw IT security as equivalent to a medieval town wall: keeping outside hackers and malicious code away from the company. Firewalls, virus scanners, and application security testing (e.g., to find SQL injections) fit the town wall approach. But Snowden was different. He was from the inside of the organization. He collected large amounts of sensitive data. Then, he got the data out of a highly secured IT organization, which had to learn from the press about the case. In this article, I will explain such data-related risks in IT departments and how data loss prevention (DLP) tools help to manage them.