GDPR: end user data loss prevention
It should be clear by now that there is no such thing as absolute GDPR compliance. But there are several steps that can be taken that will ensure that you don’t fall foul of the GDPR and technology has a critical role to play.
Without a technical solution for monitoring the collection, processing and storage of personal data, enterprises run the risk of falling foul of the strict new regulation when it is introduced in May 2018. And it’s not enough to just monitor, you need to protect and educate your end user at the same time.
While the text of the GDPR itself does not state that a technical solution is required, it is up to each enterprise to decide what is best for their needs. One thing is sure though, it is not going to cut any ice with the regulator if you point to policy when there are affordable technical solutions available. That said there are a plethora of differing solutions on the market currently and most them do not offer any real time protection for your data; pure analytics and ‘after the horse has bolted’ type solutions are, to be frank, useless.
In terms of affordable technology, data discovery, classification and data loss prevention (DLP) software would seem to be the most obvious place to start for most.
The significant rise in high profile data breaches over the past few years has led to a resurgence in demand for DLP solutions; currently the DLP market is worth £800m and this is rising rapidly at a rate of between 16%-22% per annum according to recent reports.
Traditionally it was only large enterprises that could afford the vast fees, ongoing management and analyst resources required to manage the beast that was DLP.
But with elegantly simple affordable DLP solutions ever more available the days of the vast on premises appliance-based DLP beast are numbered.
With the GDPR, data protection will no longer be the preserve of the IT department or the chief information officer, it will be a whole-enterprise responsibility and with prices per user now pennies per month via SaaS based solutions the market is set for a huge rise as the larger SMEs gear up.
Current DLP solutions are often heavyweight affairs that are costly, require their own servers and rarely allow for working practices such as bring your own device, or if they do it is via a proxy server, which means built in latency for users – a significant bugbear.
